The sun once again did not forget to rise the next morning, even when the very heart of this city, or perhaps the entire country, was forgetting to beat. It was after the birds’ last melody in their morning anthem did the eyes of the people begin to finally rise with the sun, and a few moments after that, their bodies began to work against gravity, and against another unknown force that made the work seem much harder than before.
You hope that within the black smoke and the tall buildings and the dull scenery of cars lined up in the streets there would be something, just something there to hint the presence of life, of warmth, of a heart that beats loud enough to awaken other hearts, and of happiness. Perhaps that unknown force had only become stronger now, more powerful and dominant, possibly even stronger than gravity itself, and if it could, for a while, become stronger than love.
I caught a glimpse of an old man, presumably in his sixties, or seventies, sat on a wooden chair outside a café dressed in a scruffy brown coat with a cigarette on one hand and a paintbrush on the other. It did not seem like he was painting, or like an artist absorbed into the details of his art, but looked rather upset, and confused, and lonely as his paintbrush swirled around in circles creating a blob of yellow paint on his canvas. Instead of making it obvious that I’m approaching him, I took out the notebook out of my pocket and pretended to be writing on the seat just a few metres beside him.
“What are you writing?” a heavy voice diffused in the air, diffused somewhere, and though I knew the question was directed at me, there was still an existence of a possibility that the man was simply talking to himself.
“Oh,” I swallowed, “nothing special. Just trying to connect some words together”. A long silence followed, and although the man did not speak, or move his lips, it seemed as though his brain was still in the process of baking the sentences and the words that will soon be said. You could smell the ingredients, but never get the chance to taste or recognize them until he finally takes the sentences out of the oven.
“I connect different colours,” he paused, “too”. I looked at his painting, at his blob of yellow paint spattered on his canvas, and then gave a gentle smile,
“Where are the other colours? All I could see is yellow”. The old man narrowed his eyes to take an accurate view of his painting, and then after a second or two, his body inflated in size as he gave out a huge sigh. For a moment, it felt like all the air in the atmosphere has been sucked out of existence, and not just air, but the life it carries with it, the life of this man himself.
“I cannot finish it,” he paused again, “yet”.
“That’s fine. It takes time. I still haven’t finished a proper sentence, connecting different things together takes time.”
“But really,” he paused, smoke his cigarette, then continued, “my job is not to connect different colours, but to connect different emotions, or I don’t know, but I know it is not the colours I connect, but something else, something inside me”. He looked at the ground and once again I smell the fresh smell of his newly baked sentences that were about to exit his oven,
“I want to add other colours to it, to join and connect the yellow with the red and the blue and the green, but if I do, I will not feel happy,” he looked at the canvas and with an aching voice, said, “I will not feel like myself”.
“I know what you mean,” I said, feeling ashamed that I didn’t have anything else to say to fix the situation we’re both in.
“Do you know what connects people together, like, different people? Or like different animals, stars, or human cells, or whatever?” the old man asked, with a desire to grasp the answer, to hold it, as though somehow it will help him reach a distant goal.
“I don’t know.” I said, embarrassingly, and then decided to become more helpful, “But I know that love connects people”. The old man’s eyes were now more narrowed, more focused on the canvas, and only now did he begin to look like an artist absorbed into something invisible beneath the yellow paint, something that perhaps resembled him.
“If connecting different colours is achieved by using the same tool, then does that mean that there is only one tool that connects everything in this universe together?” he asked once more with the same kind of desire for the answer as before.
“Perhaps. And perhaps it’s the same tool that connects different colours together.” I said, as I began to gradually understand the goal the old man is trying to reach.
“And words,” he said with a smile, a smile I did not expect to see coming from a miserable old man painting a blob of yellow paint in a deserted café. He threw the cigarette on the ground, crushed it with his worn out boot and then dipped his paintbrush in red paint before mixing it with the lonely yellow on the canvas.
“I have come to realize that I do not create art to become an artist,” he paused, “but to become myself”.
‘I do not create art to become an artist, but to become myself’ he said. But what is it about art, and about connecting different colours, words, or melodies together that pulls one closer to their true selves? And if connecting different words together with the same tool that connects the entire universe creates art, and if art means connection, then can art connect people, and the universe, to defeat that unknown force? A force that collapses cities, countries, hearts, eliminates the human population and spreads all kinds of evil, tyranny and injustice?
Perhaps it will. No, not perhaps �" It will. It will. Because that’s the only thing that love, the tool in connecting and creating art, cannot connect to. It cannot connect with evil. It never will. It never will. And it will never be defeated.
Art, will not be defeated.
I placed the tip of the pen on my notebook’s page and then wrote,
I do not write to become a writer, but to become myself.
Again and again I wrote it, and again and again I will remind myself of it before every word connection I try to make, and every art I try to create.
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