Among many things stuffed inside my tattered, foul old rucksack, my delicate handmade radio is the most imperative of the lot, strung together with barbed wire and duct tape half the time I’m glueing it back into one piece, and last week it started to talk again. If I had a pedometer the numbers would be ticking off the screen. I've walked from Switzerland to France eagerly following this mysterious voice that beckons me over the radio “Find Old Monaco, I’ll be there”, and there it is again, blasting through the speakerphone.
I only have my voice, whether it be in my head or spoken out, I know that nothing and no one will ever respond, yet I try to remain positive, it’s good for the sanity. There are so many places that I wish I could’ve seen before the rapture, Mount Everest, Tokyo, the Grand Canyon, the Hulunbuir, yet now more than ever the world seems so much more vast than it used to; oceans swallow this planet whole, when before they only seemed to be a short flight. I would do a great many of things to be in an aeroplane again, watch the world from so high up, feel like I could touch the clou… “Find Old Monaco, I’ll be there”. Like an old friend, that wretched voice impedes my restless thoughts once again.
I do envy the times when modern engineering gave so many simple pleasures, out of all the items I wish I could find, one would be a pop-up tent. It’s been four years now and I’ve set up a tent every night for a good three of them, but out of all the things I’ve found, why not a pop-up tent? Four years of this. Four. Restless. Endless. Years. No TV, Internet or even people to talk to, and I deign not read another book. My baleful insight is my greatest enemy, yet it is also my closest friend, it is the only thing that brings me that bitter-sweet company.
I never went to Monaco, too pishposh for my liking. Whilst Niki Lauda was racing round in his Formula 1 car, and stuck-up rich guys were eating out at Nobu, I was back at home enjoying the simple pleasures of life. Making trillions and blowing it all on fancy dinners was never my lifestyle ideal, perhaps I just have a twisted vision due to all the YouTube I used to watch, gosh, YouTube, I haven’t said that in a while, then again neither has anyone.
For all I know, if there isn’t another person on the other side of this radio, and instead it’s just a record on repeat, I may very well be the last of my race, I may be the last of 200,000 years of evolution to this very moment, hundreds of billions of ancestors are watching me right now, judging my every move. I must appease them.
“Find Old Monaco, I’ll be there”. “Find Old Monaco, I’ll be there”. “Find Old Monaco, I’ll be there”. How I yearn, whoever took the world from me, hear me, I yearn, I yearn this isn’t another cruel trick, I yearn there is another on the other side of this radio, I yearn. Perhaps this, my endless punishment will be my undoing, will be humanities undoing. A tragic blissful end to a short and sweet lifeform, it feels suspiciously funny. Wherever nothingness may be, whether it’s already found me, I can be sure, it won’t be far behind, thus I must keep moving.
I have long sought the perfect tale, the perfect picture, the perfect way to ooze my sorrow and dismay into a medium that may connect an unsuspecting victim to my harsh, desolate view on the world. A cold and dark place, which taints the lives of saddened souls to a peaceful paradise in the great beyond, a place far from this.
I believe there is no such way an artist can create an emotion without embracing it for themselves, they must understand it’s capability on the mind. In my restless journey for the perfect piece, I must expose myself to these emotions I try to recreate.
Heroism and villainy may only take us so far, for an artist to truly expose the soul they must delve into the darkest of human sensation, heightening oneself of all emotion, one must welcome sorrow with open arms accepting all the malice it may entail. In other words, one must become sorrow itself, only then will they be able to replicate it.
I don’t simply see the world in an average view, I see a monotony, a never-ending repetition of experiences simply disguising themselves as different days of a week. I upend reality, and experience it as others do not. I only see colour, in dire need of manipulation. The world lacks disorder, this is my epiphany.
Solitude. Pure. Unending. Solitude. I speak to no-one and no-one speaks to me, for now I only speak in emotion, in flicks of a pen, and colours in a picture. Yet I still do not fear loneliness, for the fear of loneliness in itself only emboldens it’s wrathful denigrations. I live now, bereft of feeling yet seeping creativity, my very being, my blood, which flows with capillarity unto my canvas. With every breath I take, a thought is birthed anew, at first just a tincture, then an idea; whether it be a swipe of a brush, a stroke of a pen or a note of an instrument, some piece of myself is transferred, more, represented.
I’ve found myself wishing more, contenting less. I walk the desolate streets of the night, cowering in my coat that shields me, that obfuscates that of the world which I do not wish to understand, or had interact with me. I hide, for I wish to fear the unknown rather than face it. People may stare, may sneer, may insult but I care not, I only care for my emotion, it is my fuel, my will; thus I must continue to refine it, by any means necessary.
I don’t understand it, the restlessness it brings my mind.
My epiphany is absent, and my views are blurred.
Have I dejected myself too far?
Was my sacrifice in vein?
I eagerly search for that tantalising hit of inspiration,
But I struggle to find it.
For I bleed,
The blood,
Of creativity,
No longer.
My capillarity lacks fluid, and my canvas lays dry.
My pigment once bright, and full of feeling,
Now dull, and generic.
Must I deject more?
Or have I reached my precipice?
…
No, I will wait.
I stick to my ways, but I will wait.
The viscosity of my creative blood,
Will flow again.
I must simply wait.
Is this sin? Do I spread sorrow as it’s blind vassal? Have I been tricked by the cruel tendrils of it’s extending mass, merely contributing to it’s dominion.
Have I sinned?
Has sorrow, my old friend, my mentor, robbed me of my empyrean. Has sorrow only used me, for it’s own eutrophication of the world.
This is blasphemy?
My creativity?
Let my dullness shrive me. Let it hear my regret and let it guide my brush and pen. Let it bring an epoch of lament for my blasphemous misdeeds. And let the viscosity of my blood, thicken no longer.
Now I am nothing, a nullful being without purpose but to create, and in mine wake of nothingness I reap the hearts of bordened souls and show them the purpose of naught. I create now, not works of emotion, but works of warning, of dull and decay. I’ve lost my blood, it drips no more. I’ve no purpose no more. I do not wish to be dead nor do I want to live, I simply wish that I would cease to exist at all, without consequence of death or life; and to those who try to help, leave me be, mine abandonment is better mine alone. Don’t deject yourself as once did I. Leave your creativity, it is existential nature. Only stare into your ceiling forever, without idea. Creativity, is fear, but it is also power, don’t use it as did I. For if you do, you will fear until eternity breathes it’s last breath.