#this is my tribute to the 6th month aniversary of the mural

[cph-dreaming]

Extract/dribbles # 19

“If you’ll let me.”

Words spoken in the safety of darkness, whispered by lips turned away from him. So soft his voice had been that night, inadvertently putting an emphasis on promises made in a way that was so much more determined than stronger words spoken as they accounted for not only the oath but also the ingrained fear of failure.

As he let the message of his memories reverberate in his mind Sander pushed himself away from his desk at the studio. He knew what he had to do, finally finding peace in the ferocity of truth. But before that last step he needed to do one thing more while he still had the courage to do so.

His decisive stride brought him to the light switch by the door. He covered his eyes as the fluorescent school lights chased his shadows away. As he opened them again the sight of his smashed easel nearly brought his resolve to an end. No, not tonight, he thought to himself, determined not to let anything, not even his own previous destructive actions, keep him from what he had to do that night.

No, it wasn’t perfect, nothing in his life would ever be, but it would have to do. The wall beneath the skylight in his studio with the help of a lot of duct tape managed the mangled remnants of his easel to hold onto the largest canvas he had left in his studio. The angles weren’t straight, had there ever been any straight lines to follow through his days, and he would have to do as he so often before had done. This he could work with.

When he came back to his studio after braking into the room next door, borrowing all the oil paint he could find, he stopped for a second as he watched the empty room before him. The bare white walls, the fluorescent light, the silence now his playlist had reached its end with even the night granting him a respite of rain hammering down the windows, brought a spring of determination to his steps as he walked back to his desk.

Finding the brushes and a palette that could serve him he picked up his phone and instinctively went through his Bowie playlist, preparing for long hours. No, not tonight. Bowie would always be his favourite but now, this night of all nights, he needed to force himself out of the comfort of everything he had previously held on to. So he ended up finding that obscure song his uncle had introduced him to some months before, a song he had alway wanted to paint to but somehow had preserved for the one day when he needed it. That day had come. And if there was ever a song made for being played on repeat, that song was it.

As the sound of the guitar started its dance to the tunes of the Hammond organ and the hoarse voice of the gypsy woman, Sander began to mix his paint. The motive had been clear to him since he had dragged himself from his recollections. Every stroke of his brush that hit the canvas as a hammer hits the glow reminded him of that cold night at the end of November where he sprayed his heart onto a wall of the one he loved for all to see. But tonight was not for him, not for his love alone, tonight was as much for himself.

The outlines were easy. It wasn’t until he had to decide on his colour scheme that he felt like standing on hill, not knowing if he painted for a love still alive or for the dead. The amber of the entrance hall would forever be ingrained into his mind. But tonight was not a night for replica. His burning heart kept whispering to him of a future without a why and a how, so as his hands followed the chords of the guitar honey turned to scarlett, flaxen became crimson, his strokes caressing the canvas while Sander felt he kept on tossing coins into the wishing well. What he painted that night was not only a recollection of the truest words he had ever spoken but an acknowledgment of him never being the same since Robbe had cried out for him. It was not only a painting of the two of them.

It was the image of his identity, broad strokes of contrasting colours, rust against indigo, vermillion next to sapphire, but for the first time in his life, it was his own face that owned the colours of light in the painting, showing him off as he truly was, the wild child. Take it or leave it.

[Disclaimer: I use the word ‘gypsy’ in this extract. I know that it is now deemed an inappropriate word, but here it is only meant as a tribute to Annisette of The Savage Rose who has said about herself: “I am the voice of a gypsy that no one wants to hear.”]