"Abandon all hope ye who enter in."
That's what I thought I saw on the plaque above the doorway as they wheeled me in. I was strapped to a table in a padded jacket calmly thinking (as detached as I always seemed to be,) "why's this happening to me?" I was different admittedly, but did that mean I was a menace, a threat or just merely a nuisance? Do I drain Society so much that it wants me hidden away where I can't disturb anyone? Who authorised that? Some relative from a blood line who never cared to be associated with the likes of me but cared enough when I acquired my wealth? Do they hope this will hasten my demise? How the vultures circle when they see a carcass left in desolation to rot in the burning heat of solitude and strip lighting. "I'm an artist," I keep telling them and in my head I'm shouting, "a visionary, a unique thinker, a transformed and enlightened soul!". I try to show them the burning colours swirling and rippling before my very eyes. The Colours of Life as I call them, but I heard others refer to the ones around me as an aura. They couldn't see. Much like they can't see the ones in everywhere else, in all living matter but especially sentient beings. They can't see the beauty, nor feel it's invigorating power. They think I'm crazy. They had me committed and I'm assigned to the empty room. My room. My home for life if they get their way. A short life they hope and I vow if I'm to live here, I'll make it a long life and fight the solitude just to spite them. They'll have to wait a very long time to get my money. Unless they pay the doctors or some bitter orderly enough to tempt them to kill me. Then things may be different. Then I may go down fighting, but I still meet my end and they get their money...my money. Oh, the things people do for money.
When the drugs wear off and I come to, they've left me in the empty room. The jacket has gone thank goodness, and I'm sat in the middle looking at the grey concrete walls all around me. I don't know what time it is, and I shall never know again. No clock or sun, no moon or stars to let me take a guess. I can't let the not knowing get me down. I can't give in. I don't like enclosed spaces but this, this is beyond confining. This is designed to crush my soul and my mind. "They haven't even put me in a padded cell," I think to myself. All the more to hasten my demise I suppose. Whether the stark cold walls kill me with their despondency or I splatter my own brains out with my cruel despair, it all amounts to the same thing, their victory over me....and I won't allow that. I see a patch of yellow in the corner, very pale and I try not to think about it as I contemplate my fate here.
When I wake I'm disorientated at first.
Then I remember and a weight crushes against me. It's the blanket of sorrow. I'm not sure why doing nothing and seeing no-one can be so soul crushing and wearisome. I'm not even a people person and I'm not sure how many times I've fallen asleep only to wake up wishing my circumstances will have changed - but they don't. At times they open a metal hatch in the door and poke through sustenance. It hardly resembles food, and I suspect it may be drugged as it tastes funny and I feel always so lethargic. I have to eat it, what choice do I have if I wish to survive? If this is survival...barely. I see small patches of blue on the ceiling and notice a very vivid green sprouting from the floor. They weren't there before, or I'd have remembered. I can hardly keep my eyes open. Has it been hours or merely minutes since I ate? A new tray has appeared. It glows with a silver sheen and a faint mist of blue. They don't trust me with utensils, I have to cat with my hands and there's nothing to wash or wipe myself with. When I want to use the toilet there's a metal bucket in the corner. If I use it I never get to see it emptied, they wait until I'm asleep. The smell from it can be so foul I cover it with my food tray after I'm done. The whole area around it has a cloud of dark purple and dull brown swirling with menace. It never rises like a happy cloud would, it stays low and depressing. I miss bright colours that would energise me. I miss sunlight and moonbeams, stars and the sea. I dream of vast oceans I can bathe in, that cleanse my body and soul
and carry me off to far flung places. Anywhere but here. Anywhere but
my
empty room.
When I wake again I'm not in my room. I'm in a jungle of terrific flora and fauna. Great waves of ferns and tree trunks covered in moss tower upwards. I'm hemmed in by their density. I can't walk far in either direction and when I look up there's a bright blue sky high above me. It sparkles in the tree canopy way up and I know it would be impossible to climb up there for me. I was never very good at climbing, nor with heights. I smile, this is better. This is an environment more befitting of an artist. This will inspire me I say to myself, and I'm already thinking how I can use this place to invent my colours and create a masterpiece to do it justice. My paintings have sold for thousands of pounds. They depict an array of colours other eyes can't see, but they can appreciate when I commit them to canvass. They're abstract, modern. How I miss painting, but here, here I could paint all day. Day. How I miss the day.
I'm not sure how long I've been here now. I woke today and found myself on a desert island. It was only a few feet in each direction and then waves would lap all around up to my feet. Vast oceans like those of my dreams would surround me here and far in the distance I could see whales and dolphins break the surface. Each day now I was transported to a different surrounding. Why they did so I did not question. Anything was better than my empty room. It hurt me when I recalled the blandness of it. Much better here. Much nicer in the vibrancy and lushness of my new vistas. I committed the memories to the furthest reaches. Wherever a hard surface met my hands I painted what I saw. The beautiful shades and hues of rainbow colours that soothed me, calmed me and helped me. But two things oddly enough were constants. The food tray and the bucket. Reminders of my reality that just won't go away. But now I can paint, now I'm not bothered I have a purpose. I'm content. But I'm also very very tired. I struggle each day I'm awake to paint the new scene and I'm in a constant stress I won't finish it before I succumb to the drowsiness. I never know how long each of my waking periods will be. It's so frustrating not to feel I will have the time to do my works justice. Artists like not to be rushed. They do their best works without deadlines and specifics. At least, I do.
Today I woke and felt a change. I'm different. My body has a silver cord emanating from it and I want to rise above and meet the midnight sky I see above me. I want to join the stars and be part of that infinite twinkling blackness. I'm on the back of a huge golden eagle. I can walk a few paces up and down the feathered floor and to my left and right if I reach out I can feel the wings blocking me in, making me feel secure that I won't fall off as they rise and fall. I'm being carried away somewhere. I feel I'm being taken home. I turn my head but now I don't see the food tray or the bucket, I only see land far far below me. I feel like I'm whole, that I have no pain or tiredness. For the first time they must have stopped drugging my food. I can rest now. I know I created a masterpiece for each of the worlds I inhabited on my journeys. It wasn't an empty room at all, it was a gateway to other lands. They didn't wish to have done with me, they were gifting me with a beautiful magic. It was in me all along, they just wanted to bring it out. When I released it, a part of me, a bit of the life force of my own lovely colours was left behind. I'd painted to the best of my ability. I could go to my eternal rest in peace. Let them have the money. But the art was mine.
The doctors had called his relations. When they opened the empty room it was onto an horrific scene of a dead body lying on the stone cold floor. The room had been transformed into a hideous mess. The patient had smeared and splattered the walls with his own blood and bodily liquids. He'd created patterns and shapes. Vile pungent messes of colour, every conceivable inch of grey space transformed.
"We will pay, we have the funds now doctors, don't worry. We will buy you a whole new wing for your hospital. We will name it the Edvard Munch Wing in his memory and have it displayed on a plaque above the main doors."
The doctors smiled, they had intimated they could be generous with the right outcome, and sure enough the patient's beneficiaries were true to their word.
What they all saw as a disturbing mess, to the artist was self expression and beauty, and I guess in Art as in Life, it all comes down to your own perspective. And when they removed the body they found words scrolled under it which he had written in bright red with his own finger. And the flourishes of his handwriting were in their own way rather lovely. It read:
"From my rotting body, flowers shall grow and I am in them and that is eternity."