When I told you that you would not understand this image, I was honest. I have always been honest.

You still won't understand it unless you have been in this place and stood here alone with no hope of anything beyond.

I am not going to attempt to write this coherently. It?s going to be as if I were talking to you. That?s the only way to really go about something of this nature. It has to be conversational.

This is everything, in a sense.

It?s an apology.

Sometimes the genius is the villain.

The environment is close and dark and we feel claustrophobic. We?re looking to inch away from this gruesome sight, away from Goliath?s empty gaze. His gaze says more about us than we may ever feel comfortable admitting.

This painting is about apology. Caravaggio is both David and Goliath. Have you ever seen such an unwilling, sad David? He is not proud. He can only look with a sort soft mixture of sorrow and disgust at the head of Goliath. He is trying for a smile, but he cannot quite pull his lips far enough up or mask the look in his eye.

Goliath has large, dead eyes and a slack jaw that exposes a set of terrible teeth. It?s shameful and painfully honest. This is the villain. He is ugly and we can imagine the crude words spit from his lips and covering us like slime. We should feel no sympathy.

Yet why does David look so mournful?

This is the young and the old Caravaggio. He is both, at once, and he has killed himself.

He has killed himself for you.

He is serving his head up. He is serving himself up in hopes of redemption.

Caravaggio was not a master of his passions. He could not control the violence within himself despite his best intentions. He wanted to desperately, but it wasn?t something he could do. He would paint himself out of a hole and land himself back in another one. This hole was one he could not climb out of.

He murdered someone and sent this painting as an apology. He sent this painting for a pardon.

By the time the Cardinal got it Caravaggio had already died. He was never pardoned, to my knowledge.

?Sorry. It is too late.?

[I forgave you because I knew you. You didn?t forgive me because you feel you have all the answers. The ones that supposedly matter anyway.]

My you is always changing.