What if you were doing something you loved more than anything in the world, but you were told you could only do it for a little while longer before you have to stop forever?
Dying, it’s the last thing we do for the first time. It’s one thing we’re all guaranteed to experience at some point in our lives. No amount of money, luck or magic can prevent it, death comes around that mountain for all of us eventually.
What would you do if you knew when it was all going to end, would you live differently or carry on as normal?
The average person lives around 85 years, right? How old are you now? How long do you have left? What are you going to do with it?
I regularly find myself in a state of existential crisis, usually triggered by music I’m listening to or books I’m reading, however this current state of crisis is triggered entirely by my own life and my own existence and so I can’t skip the song or close the book on this one, I simply must fight my way through it.
There’s changes I can’t make, things I can’t avoid and the feeling of having no control is a rather alarming one to say the least.
My life has changed beyond all recognition in the last 12 months, in fact, had you told me 12 months ago that this would be my life now I don’t think I would have believed you, in fact, I’m certain I wouldn’t. And yet, that’s 12 months off the countdown. 1 year down, how many to go?
Life is moving at lightning speed and each month brings more changes with it, and takes us all one step closer to one step closer to one step closer. So, the cycle continues, we breathe, inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, exhale, ex.
What do I know, I’m just an artist trying to understand the hand that life dealt me, trying my best to work my way through it all. The vessel that is my body, the place that I call home, leaks feelings and paintings in equal measures now, where once tears fell and vomit dripped a rainbow of paint now falls. Where the river ran red it’s now luminescent, medication maybe or just the emotions bottled up in jars of acrylic paint now spilling carelessly over canvasses. Who knows. Does anyone really care?
Can we normalise being 33 and not having a clue what’s going on? Not having that perfectly put together life, things falling apart that weren’t ever meant to and starting over for what is almost certain to be the final time? Unless, of course, it isn’t.
Vincent Van Gogh was 37 when he swapped his paintbrush for a revolver and left his final mark on this world in various shades of ochre and heartache. Blood turns from red to various shades of browns as it dries, Ochre, comes in various shades of reds, oranges and browns, isn’t that weirdly beautiful? A man who painted some of his most iconic paintings, not that he knew they were iconic, with shades of ochre had those same shades as the last colours he left on this world.
Whether he knew it or not, at 33 he had just 4 years left.
If so much can change in one year, what could happen in four?
Welcome to The 1461 Escapade, let’s find out.
Comments