The Tsar of Love and Techno

by Anthony Marra

I am an artist first, a censor second.

One shouldn’t envy this woman’s blind devotion to a man who has proven himself unworthy of love. One mustn’t.

The stomach is not the only vital organ that hungers.

coins cannot choose their fate.

“When the subjects are cold, the tsar tells them to look at the painting and see the beautiful coats and furs they will soon wear. When they sleep outside, he tells them to look at the painting and see the beautiful homes they will soon live in. “The subjects obey the tsar. They know that if they turn their eyes from the painting and see what is around them, if they see the world as it is, the tsar will make them disappear in a big poof of smoke. Soon, all his subjects are frozen in place, unable to move, just like their reflections in the painting.”

You remain the hero of your own story even when you become the villain of someone else’s.

They learn to censor before they learn to write. They were never taught to create what they now destroy, and have no appreciation of what, precisely, they sacrifice.

“We have art in order not to die of the truth,”

Those who can’t succeed, teach. Those who can’t teach, censor the successes of others. Still I could have turned out worse; I’m told the German chancellor is also a failed artist.

For art to be the chisel that breaks the marble inside us, the artist must first become the hammer.

if I begin to think…all roads in that direction lead to darkness.

That morning the last images of Vaska’s face had been scratched into nothingness with a one-ruble coin. That afternoon I began painting him into everything.

The ledger will never be righted, and Vaskas added to art will never make up for the Vaska subtracted from life, but the act of multiplying my brother, of seeing him again each day, seeing who he was and might have become, the idea that I may have finally become a portrait artist, makes the rest of the work bearable.

the future is the lie with which we justify the brutality of the present.

Let them see my omission for what it is: a silence as pronounced as a hand hovering in midair, the error in the lie that is the truth. Let them know that here, on this day, a guilty man began living honestly.

The institutions we believe in will pervert us, our loved ones will fail us, and death is a falling piano.

we can’t trade atoms no matter how hard we thrust. Our hearts may skip but our substance remains fixed.

“The world is ending,” he said. “Don’t die,” I said. “The imperialist warheads will land soon.” “You will have the last word.” “Your name will be that word.” He tapped the mixtape case on my forehead. “And when my time comes, when I’m way out there in space, I’ll be listening.” 9

Everything large enough to love eventually disappoints you, then betrays you, and finally, forgets you. But the things small enough to fit into a shoebox, these stay as they were.

Vera stood at the front of the church before an icon of the Virgin and child. The great golden god was helpless in his mother’s arms.

They longed for the old days, not because their lives had been better, but because there had been an equality of misery back then. We were their sons and we wanted more.

“All these people who opened their purses on the metro, when they see a legless vet, they feel ashamed and maybe a little pity. But when they see me crawling across the metro car, they see someone defiant, silent, not begging for anything, and they feel pride. They’re paying me for the privilege of feeling proud when they should feel disgraced.”

What an improbable thing it was to be alive on Earth.

If ever there was an utterance of perfection, it is this. If God has a voice, it is ours.

The calcium in the collarbones I have kissed. The iron in the blood flushing those cheeks. We imprint our intimacies upon atoms born from an explosion so great it still marks the emptiness of space. A shimmer of photons bears the memory across the long, dark amnesia. We will be carried too, mysterious particles that we are.

In what dream does the empty edge of the universe hold this echo of vitality? In what prayer does the last human not die alone? Who would have imagined you would be with me, here, so...

One more time through. From the beginning. Just give...