Teach me to be an Artist

I never thought I was the kind of person that would fall in love with a teacher. I used to scorn the girls who, in the hallways between classes, giggled and chattered about that one young teacher whose lectures they looked forward to because he was, oh so attractive.

The lecture I look forward to is my art history class, which rather than a lecture, is an adventure through the exhibits of the world-renowned museums in Munich, where I am studying abroad. I look forward to standing in front of paintings that most people only see in books. But most of all I look forward to seeing and hearing the man who stands in front of them and unlocks their secrets for us.

He’s unlike any teacher I’ve ever had: soft-spoken, modest, respecting every ignorant comment that we, in our broken German, attempt about the Rafael, the Monet, the Kandinsky. The young overachiever in me, the one that scorned those silly girls, comes surging back as I try to answer every hard question, find every detail that no one else can, if only to catch a moment of his beautiful blue-eyed gaze, a look of approval. Or perhaps something more.

I see the ring on his finger, I overhear the calls he sometimes gets from a daughter, but it doesn’t matter to me. He is an artist, and I want him to teach me everything. I want him to take me to get coffee, tell me about his work, and take me to an installation of his most recent work in progress. As we stand on the concrete side by side, we understand that this is it, the only time that I get to be his muse. It comes like a flash of inspiration, a wordless communication of souls. What comes to pass on the concrete floor is a transcendence, a work of art.