It has been over three years since I churned out a long piece of text, from the whirlpools of thoughts, that go about inside this head. I know why. I chose to. What was I doing instead? I think all experiences are additive. They add up to an individual’s defined events. Experiences are filled with a variety of feelings. And events define the epitome of those feelings. It could lie anywhere between a range of emotions, say, elation and misery. It is only in retrospect that I choose to either keep or remove those events, their feelings, and comprising experiences from defining me. Henceforth, some events in my life, have become important mental landscapes
"―reference points. Some more important than others. They teach me something– or try to. People need things like that to go on living– mental landscapes that have meaning for them, even if they can't explain them in words. Part of why we live is to come up with explanations for these things."
Murakami in 1Q84: Book 2
I borrow this idea from him and make it a brush. Like some metaphorical tool to articulate and paint another mental landscape. The one you’re reading about.
I like to paint, quite literally. It is one of the first things I learned to love as a kid. Love for fantasies came soon enough. When I was younger, I’d label my fantasy worlds and unlived lives as crucial landscapes. One of the first fantasy stories I wrote, my parents say, was when I was in Kindergarten. I had hoped to grow up and find purpose in these magical worlds that once existed inside this head. But… Ugh, there is always a “but”, with only one ‘t’, I was handed dot-drawings. Numbered dots laid out for me to join and paint. They were often washed out and seldom colorful. They demanded importance and I had to give up on my fantasies. And I gave in to what others wanted me to paint. I accpeted that as my own wants. I couldn’t articulate what I wanted for myself. I forgot to want for myself. And I forgot the feeling of receiving, in substance or soul, from anyone. Well, most of the time.
There were times when I’d pretend to work on dot-drawings but they were secretly landscapes that I wanted to paint. I learned the tricks of timing and suggestive-narratives. I’d hide my wants, in dot-drawings I was handed, skillfully. For instance, taking Math with Biology after high school. For another instance, multiple schoolmates believing, and taking pride, in being the first one to identify me as a potential School Captain. I know, I was a con-artist and a thief. Aren’t all great artists are? But I did what I thought was necessary to preserve my wants and fantasies. Through compromises and trickery. I got good at it. I almost thought that it was a viable way to continue to live with the least offenses. Eventually, I hit a wall. I reached a landscape that I didn’t want to paint. There was no way into it that would’ve preserved me. So, I chose to give up the whole join-dots-and-paint practice.
Making that choice shattered illusions. Alas, it was just a single choice I could make. My behavior was damaged to an extent where I was living for dot-drawing landscapes. I’d still accept and paint, what anyone wanted, with everyone in my life. I’d paint them. I’d label them as my own. I’d share it with others. I’d marvel over how perfectly they complemented with theirs. It felt like a scam. It gnawed my integrity.
It was different, though. This time, I could recognize what and how I was painting. Perhaps that, ability to recognize, required my insecurities and fears to dissociate me into two. Two parts in all the dimensions of thoughts possible. One part to constantly see and recognize what the other is up to. We idealize one and criticize the other. After all, don’t we talk to ourselves the most? How’s that possible if there weren’t two: inside out? Sometimes, there was alienation between the two as well. Until then, I didn’t realize that the fights between the two were affecting how I was painting; an analogy for recognizing mental health, perhaps. Then at some point, painting some landscape, I discovered something more. I discovered the thread that still connected the two, or at least the outline of it. It wasn’t anything new. It was what preserved me in the first place: Creativity.
Discovering that took me back to the compromises and tricks of time and narratives that I once employed. I wondered about it and the thousands of questions that sprung up in this head. I was running out of answers; the trick is to ask the right questions. Always arriving late for the love of my life; the trick is to be the one who waits. Didn’t create anything original; the trick is to steal and hide your sources. I made a choice, since then. We must trick ourselves. Or rather, trick the two I was divided into, to work in the same team. Through rights and wrongs, I kept that thread active to course-correct myself and discover more threads: Kindness, empathy, privileges, and fill_in_the_blanks.
These past years, I’ve been painting landscapes without pre-made dot-drawings. It hasn’t been easy but it has been fun. A kid trying to paint over and over. These are vibrant landscapes. They lack form but a better sense of purpose develops out of, and for these landscapes. I do receive dot-drawings, too, and out of habit, I fall into old routines of giving in. But my ability to recognize what and how I paint has improved. Such dot-draw-landscapes become less important and I often reject them or paint them as I want them.
It took me this long to pause the process of painting mental landscapes. A pause to reflect and feel. A kid marveling over the mess they made. Let’s be honest, the landscapes are not as colorful as I imagined yet. Some are murky. Some are abstract. Some are representational. Some are both. Some are complete. Some are not. Some were made in a hurry while some I still wish to start on. But all of them have the elements that I had been missing. I can feel fantasy etching in highlights and undertones. I can feel the struggle in those freehand strokes. I can feel romance tinting complete canvases. I can feel truth lurking from the blacks with the whites. I can feel. I can write.