Poemander

Death is the other side of life, it is the intent accomplished. Death is when the intent reaches its goal, whether we want it or not. There is no other difference between life and death.

It was long time since this framed and gessoed canvas was sitting behind the cupboard collecting dust. I had brushes, paint, palette, spatulas and many great ideas, yet the work wouldn't start. Years ago I used to take it out and position on the easel. Coming nearer and further with the palette and a paintbrush in my hands, I was looking at empty canvas with the head tilted, squinting. Lately, though, it is only in my mind that I pictured this frame, imagined mixing paint and spreading the colours. I had all, but no matter how I mixed them, I couldn't get the right shade of black, it didn't look black enough. Problem remained: black wasn't meant to be a colour, it is the absence of colours. No, this wasn't easy.

Like out of nowhere, as if drawing on the long forgotten memories, a bow pulled this wandering chord in A minor. It lingered harrowing through the atrium until eventually giving in and feverishly resolving with an augmented sixth. The already pressurised atmosphere scornfully reverberated in a shrewd breath of a tritone treacherously puffed out of a brass alto horn hiding somewhere in the dark. But, as if that wasn't enough, then came this trembling mystery, leaving behind only the unremitting silence, a moment lasting eternity... Nothing, Nichts! “Tristan!”, her voice pierced the silence, “Listen, listen!” – she cried. But there was nothing at all that Isolde could do. Her heart jumped pointlessly like fish thrown on a cold slippery ice. The sound of her own sobbing was getting very distant as if sucked in by the vacuum. Quiet.

The needle climbed shamelessly to the very top of the speedometer and slanted mockingly towards the right. The lights flashed alongside turning everything into endless spaghetti. In their snake-like bodies they wriggled devouring the oncoming geometry of time. Soprano went off like a siren, and, Bang! With a whiplash motion it all slipped through the ruptured dream-fabric strewing a myriad of colourful beads onto the empty space of my canvas. Pitch-black. A dot, a black dot in the black night – all what was left. Not the colour, but the absence of them, the complete and boundless absence.