An artist named Caillebotte painted men scraping floors. These paintings always move me. Even without being dignified in a painting, something about the sight of people engaged in their master-craft is art to the senses, and I saw some of that art yesterday played out before my very eyes.
Two grizzly workmen, came to the house yesterday, and gracefully swept through a task that would have taken days of stumbling, oathful labor for most people. They took a look at the bare bedroom floor, and whisked their tools upstairs. They seemed to invisibly spirit the heavy roll of carpet lying in the livingroom onto the front yard where they cut its ends off. Then it suddenly was on the floor upstairs with a layer of cushiony underlayment already hidden underneath! They were both on their knees with cutter tools and hammers and a heavy knee-operated whammer tool by the time I looked in. The guy would put that heavy tool against the carpet where it lay up against the outer wall and wham its padded end with his right knee. Then he would move it along the wall and wham it again. The carpet was thus caught in nails installed underneath and then the hammer would fix those nails in place. The cutter whipped off excess in one stroke and all was done. They whisked up their tools and that was that!
All told it took about an hour. They drove away with our cash in their pockets leaving us with our new bedroom floor and a few scraps of carpet to dispose of. Like magic! It was a beautiful performance! The performance of a master work.
Yes, I did see them sweat a bit. It was hot yesterday. But what I did not have to see to know is that they had done a ton of heavy sweating over the years to get so good at doing that. Just like the little child screeching out notes on the little school violin, there were years of no applause and no compensation. Just the willingness to do the sweating and trusting in the confidence of someone who had gone before and mastered the art. How many hammered thumbs and mis-measured carpets, I wonder? How many days when everything went wrong and had to be done over?
If a person does nothing else on earth in his whole life, he should master some one thing. There should be some place he can go and perform his dance with the economy of poetry and the grace of music.
It's for everyone's joy -- not just for himself-- that he will do this.
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