An Apple Going Over Niagara Falls
by Mila Purcell

This is a painting I did when I was five. Interesting choice of colours. You can clearly see the apple, rushing to its impending demise. There is a defining, pervasive sense of motion in the piece... suspended motion. I really nailed it, in my opinion. For a child, I had a strong sense of foreboding. Kind of eerie, actually, now that I think about it (which is something I hadn’t done in ages, until I found it in a stack of papers, coffee-ringed and largely ignored). But I’m beginning to feel the significance of it now. Powerfully. As if I’ve just realized that I’m holding the Rosetta stone to my life, masterfully executed by me at the ripe and sage fifth year of it. Weird. I don’t actually remember painting it. I do, however, remember having the idea to paint it... stranger still.

I should have prefaced all that by saying that I am not now, nor have I ever been an “artist” (with the apparent exception of this one, freak instance). Oh sure, I loved my crayons and pencils like any kid - especially new ones, still in the package. I could draw or colour for great swathes of time contentedly. But as for talent... well - I could show you some pretty paltry attempts at stick people representing my Mum, my uncle, whoever; they look like I was trying to draw with the pen wedged between the toes of my left foot (and let me say that I was no Christy Brown!). To this day I am haunted by remembrances of the girl in my grade six class who could render plausible caricatures of our teachers effortlessly whilst I struggled with my dried-out liquid paper brush, trying desperately to make the lion on the cover of my project look majestically feline and less like an anorexic Bert Lahr. To no avail, if I recall correctly.

This painting is really a great revelation for me. Like all children, I was unfettered by knowledge and therefore, crippling, no: paralyzing self-doubt was at that time not a governing aspect of my life. I didn’t set out to paint this thinking: “Whatever I do will be sheer and utter crap interpreted badly by a skill-less amateur. It’s going to suck LARGE.” Those thoughts took at least another few years to entrench themselves in the fibre of my existence. What I thought at the time was something like: “‘s gonna be bee-yoo-tee-full pikchur.” What is shocking me now is the electric discovery that it is just that. And what a fool I am for not knowing it sooner. And what a genius I must have been to paint it at all. A prodigy with the soul of a cheeky haiku writer! I didn’t want to paint a flower or a princess. I wanted a bloody apple, if you please, caught in the process of experiencing (to the fullest), a great natural wonder before it was to meet its obvious end. Inspired brilliance! I successfully captured the moment for all to behold. Now: wait a minute, here. Let’s be clear on which moment I mean. If you look, you can see that I wasn’t depicting the much-lauded point when the object in question reaches the edge and first begins its descent. That’s melodramatic and overrated, as we all know. Not to mention the fact that it’s been done literally to death already by guys in barrels, discarded popsicle sticks and other less notable detritus. No, what I’m getting at here is the precise point at which the apple, if it were to become suddenly conscious, say, would realize the gravity (forgive the pun) of its predicament and (if we can also assume the apple is somewhat enlightened - which I happen to know we can) simultaneously acknowledge the pervasive wonder and beauty of life. The apple would be living in the moment.

This is perhaps the most important piece of paper I have ever generated. This says so much more than a birth certificate or a pay stub. This painting represents all the themes that have recurred throughout my life... but concisely.

A casual observer (a really crass, legally blind one) might be tempted to ask, “But why an apple?” To which anyone who knows anything would have to respond, “Like, DUH! The apple is the fruit of the tree of knowledge - a fruit not yet tasted by the artist, which makes it so much more poignant in that, if it is indeed so desirable as to irresistible to man and womankind, what is it doing going over the Falls? And besides, the apple represents life itself - has it been discarded? Inadvertently or otherwise? Did it leap of its own volition? Does it even matter?

The water itself is powerful. Note how the artist intentionally avoided using blue for it. It is churning, tempestuous, strong and muddied. It obviously represents both the ‘essence’ of life and the unconscious (as does all water in dreams). So what you are seeing is the apple (the manifestation of a life; the fruit of knowledge) experiencing (in the extreme sense of the word) water (being the unconscious and for those Jedi amongst you: the Force). Simplistically: consciousness immersed in the unconscious. All this takes place in the context of Nature, which is to say that it is both finite and cyclical - the apple will, most assuredly perish... only to be replaced by another, one fine day. Whoa.

My mother liked this painting, I remember. She was proud to stick it on her fridge for a while. How I ended up with it is anybody’s guess. But I will no longer let it curl and stain, forgotten in the pile of useless paper that pretends importance in my life. No. I think I’m having it photocopied and I’m going to hang about three dozen copies of it strategically throughout my apartment where it can’t fail to catch my attention. Or I might staple it to a stick on a headdress I will fashion so that it hangs in front of my eyes all the time. To remind me of a time when I knew more than I do now, without knowing it. It will say to me (in a chorus, with angelic fanfare), “You are this apple. It doesn’t matter where you came from. Or that you will die. You are here. Right NOW.”