Written during the May Day Labor Holiday:

In front of the Chair of Saint Peter at the Vatican, I listen to the choir and weep. This is not because I’ve been “called” by some so-called divine inspiration, but because of my conversation with Claude:
I told him that I’ve seen so many churches and so many works of art, and I’ve realized that I don’t really like them. I’m only looking for the shadow of human beings inside them, only to find God everywhere. In fact, I do like myths, but I don’t like religion.
Claude said I asked him so many questions—about what’s behind these frescoes, tapestries, and buildings. And besides Raphael, Michelangelo, and Bernini, why aren’t the painters and craftsmen behind them recorded? He said that by tying all these questions together, he can understand how I feel.
In a world created by workers, what’s left behind is the designer’s name—and the image of God condensed into form. Behind it are politics, power, and the so-called self-evident rightness.
In religious art, everything points to the same kind of correct, the one and only truth: follow the authority’s interpretation; error leads to damnation; correctness leads to salvation. But the divine images they borrow—at least in my impressions from childhood—they all make mistakes and they all have weaknesses. I can’t make sense of it. I feel split apart.
It’s allowed for tragedy to have no meaning. It’s allowed to leave behind oneself, recorded by the people. It’s allowed for our lives to have multiple interpretations and open-ended endings. When I say “I don’t like it,” what I’m really longing for is probably all of these.
So I like the rationality of *The School of Athens*—especially the self-portrait Raphael has hidden inside, staring at me. I like the freedom in *The Birth of Venus*: her birth is freedom of beauty; she gazes at us rather than we gazing at her. I like the vitality of the Belvedere Torso—the sense of dynamic beauty written between bone and muscle, inspiring the simplest form of bodily worship on the Sistina ceiling.
The capital that creates God is the one that most needs redemption. The labor that creates the world is the one that most deserves to be looked up to.