I hate to be alone in this city.
“Because in French, alone is lonely.”
Maybe you wanted to be alone, and that is why you chose ‘La Rochelle’ to settle in. You wanted peace for your art. You felt that the noise of your travels had started to seep into your sculptures. Each face had a story to tell, an emotion to emit and had a language of its own. I saw you listening carefully to them as if to hear their whispers. You were a mad man to the world, but you were ‘My mad man’.
It is funny how we want to ‘Possess’ everything we love. The idea of ownership is so blinding at times isn’t it. In your quest to attain that possession, love leaves somewhere in between. All you are left with is a body, sculpted of clay and too much noise of the journey it has been through…
And no soul. None…
What are sculptures without souls? Dead, Immobile fancy creations made from the hands of people that had too much of a God Complex. Molding each and every curve and crevice with utmost care and pride, you wanted to create a masterpiece out of us. It was a game of ownership and pride, and we both played it with our own rules.
Artists can be selfish beings, and when they fall in Love, it is like an attempt to triumph the conflict. They will be stubborn enough like a kid who may get his hand stuck in the cookie jar but won’t let go of the cookie. When we first met in ‘Copenhagen’, it took you only a cup of latte at ‘The Coffee Collective’ to realize that you were in love. You were a wandering artist, going from city to city, in search of your masterpiece and you thought I was the one.
It was a mistake right from the start now that I look back on it. You saw your creation in me, like a subject to his master, like a favorite disciple to his teacher. There was no love. It was the mystery of creation that you saw unfolding in front of your eyes which fascinated you. I was the one with the wings, and you wanted to capture me in the molds of stone and clay. I had to go to ‘Barcelona’ because it had ‘Gaudí’. You hated him like a jealous artist who had his creation stolen by another.
And so the jar broke. You sat there with splattered glass and broken cookies, like a kid who had lost his most precious possession, not realizing it wasn’t his to take. You couldn’t possess love, and that burnt you in agony. Sitting on your knees on the stone-clad street at that ungodly hour, you yelled out at God in your pride hurting agony, for making you so powerless over your creations. The realization of being human stung you like a bolt of lightning. I had my back to you, but somehow the agony stayed with me.
We went our separate ways.
I found ‘Gaudí’ in ‘Barcelona’ and you found solace in ‘La Rochelle’. We found what we both thought was meant for us and realized that maybe it wasn’t. We had too much pride to accept our mistakes, so life went on and so did time with its creeping paces.
“Past the point of no return
the final threshold –
the bridge is crossed, so stand and watch it burn “
Walking through the corridors of ‘Bellesgard’, I still think of you sometimes or when I look at the half molded face of mine in stone that you sent me years after that evening in ‘Copenhagen’.
You couldn’t complete your masterpiece so you left ‘me’ incomplete.
You broke the jar yourself…
Like a jealous god who had lost his creation to another.
Maybe in the scattered glass and broken cookies, there was love.
After all…
