When I work, and in my art, I hold hands with God.

Host: The studio was a cathedral of light and shadow. Canvases leaned against the walls like unfinished prayers; the air smelled of turpentine, sweat, and truth.

Outside, the city pulsed with its usual noise — honking, shouting, living — but in here, there was only silence, the sound of creation breathing.

Jack stood before a half-finished painting, his shirt splattered with color, his hands trembling from exhaustion and something deeper. Jeeny sat by the window, watching him — her hair catching the dying sunlight, her eyes reflecting the gold that fell through the cracked glass.

On the table beside her lay a small card — the quote written in charcoal:

“When I work, and in my art, I hold hands with God.” — Robert Mapplethorpe

Jeeny: softly “You ever feel that, Jack? Like your hands stop being yours for a while?”

Jack: without turning, his voice low and rough “If by that you mean losing control, yeah. Every damn time.”

Host: The light shifted slowly across the floor, creeping toward the painting — a human figure emerging from darkness, half divine, half broken.

Jeeny: “Mapplethorpe didn’t mean control. He meant surrender. The moment you stop trying to own the art and let it own you.”

Jack: turns slightly, a smirk ghosting his lips “That’s easy to say when you believe in God.”

Jeeny: “You don’t have to believe to touch something holy.”

Host: The brush slipped from his hand, clattering against the floor. Jack bent to pick it up, staring at it for a moment like it might accuse him of something.

Jack: “You know what I believe in? Craft. Work. Precision. You mix enough red with black, you get something that bleeds. That’s not God — that’s chemistry.”

Jeeny: leans forward, voice steady “And yet you call it ‘bleeding.’ Not blending. You give it a pulse.”

Host: A faint smile flickered across her lips. The wind outside stirred the curtains, making them dance like smoke.

Jack: “You really think God’s in this?” He gestures to the mess of brushes, paints, chaos. “In this madness?”

Jeeny: “Especially in this madness. What else would creation be, if not a divine kind of chaos?”

Host: The sunlight hit the painting now — the figure’s face suddenly illuminated, eyes empty, mouth open as if mid-prayer or mid-scream. Jack stared at it, his breath catching for reasons he couldn’t name.

Jack: “You talk about art like it’s confession.”

Jeeny: “Isn’t it? Every stroke is something you couldn’t say out loud.”

Jack: bitterly “Then God’s heard a lot of lies from me.”

Jeeny: “Maybe He prefers honest lies to polite silence.”

Host: The room grew darker as the sun slipped lower. Jack lit a lamp, its golden halo spilling across his skin, his paint-stained hands looking almost sacred.

Jeeny: “Mapplethorpe saw his art as worship. Not in the religious sense, but as contact. The human reaching for the infinite. Every artist becomes a priest of their own truth.”

Jack: “That’s poetic. But priests have faith. I just have deadlines.”

Jeeny: smiling gently “Deadlines are still rituals.”

Host: She stood, walked toward the painting, and stopped inches from it. The figure looked alive now under the lamplight, the colors vibrating with quiet violence.

Jeeny: “You paint like someone trying to forgive something.”

Jack: “Or destroy it.”

Jeeny: “Same thing, sometimes.”

Host: Her finger traced the air just above the canvas — not touching, just close enough to feel the warmth of his obsession.

Jeeny: “When you work, what do you feel?”

Jack: after a pause “Terror. Like I’m opening a door and I don’t know what’s on the other side.”

Jeeny: “And you keep opening it.”

Jack: “I don’t have a choice.”

Jeeny: “That’s holding hands with God.”

Host: Jack froze — the paintbrush still in his hand, the light trembling slightly. For a moment, the room felt charged, like electricity and prayer had found the same frequency.

Jack: “You think God needs painters?”

Jeeny: “I think He needs witnesses.”

Host: The silence that followed was holy in its own right — not absence, but fullness. The kind that stretches time, makes seconds ache.

Jack: “When I was a kid, my mother used to say God made us in His image. I used to wonder if He regretted that.”

Jeeny: “Maybe He’s still painting too.”

Host: The lamplight flickered as if agreeing. Jack looked down at his hands — stained, trembling, alive.

Jack: “You really believe art connects us to something divine?”

Jeeny: “I don’t just believe it. I feel it. Every time a poem breaks me open. Every time a photo captures more truth than words ever could. Art isn’t about creation, Jack — it’s about communion.”

Jack: “Communion with what?”

Jeeny: “With the parts of ourselves that still remember eternity.”

Host: Jack’s expression shifted — the skepticism softening into something closer to reverence, though he’d never call it that.

Jack: “You talk like art’s salvation.”

Jeeny: “It is. Because it demands honesty. Even when honesty hurts.”

Jack: “Then I’ve been confessing my whole life.”

Jeeny: “Exactly.”

Host: The rain began outside — a soft percussion against the glass, blending with the steady sound of Jack’s breathing.

Jeeny: “You know why I think Mapplethorpe said that? ‘I hold hands with God’? Because art doesn’t come from us. It comes through us. We’re just the wire; the current’s somewhere higher.”

Jack: “Or deeper.”

Jeeny: “Same direction, just a different map.”

Host: She smiled — a soft, luminous thing. Jack looked at her then, really looked, and something inside him shifted, like recognition between two people who had both walked through the same fire.

Jack: “So when I paint… when I get lost in it… that’s not madness?”

Jeeny: “No, Jack. That’s prayer.”

Host: The lamp flickered again. Jack turned back to the canvas, his hand hovering over it, trembling but steady in its intent. The brush touched down, and in that instant, his breathing changed — slower, deeper.

Jeeny stepped back, watching him fall into rhythm — into surrender.

Jack: “If this is God, He’s not gentle.”

Jeeny: “Neither is truth.”

Host: The colors began to move again, merging, separating