Page 2 of The Painter and His Poet

A blessing because it enables me to express myself through art, a curse because every time I hear music, or more specifically,someone singing, I have this desperate need to paint and can’t stop until the piece is done. Ten hours, twenty-four hours, days even, it doesn’t matter. I’ll barely give myself a moment to take a piss, and throw back some water, let alone eat. I’m in this indescribable place where nothing but putting colour to canvas is important. I’m just a vessel for the art to flow through, like the music notes that tantalise my ears and fuck with my senses, which is why I have to wear noise cancelling headphones and listen to white noise on a loop when I’m not holed up in my loft in blissful, soundproofed silence.

Sound is as vibrant as Brooklyn itself, and I learnt very quickly upon arrival that if I were to survive here I’d have to protect myself from the incredible array of music pouring out of every bar, night club, shop, and street corner where buskers perform daily. Occasionally, however, I spot someone singing and I remove my headphones, close my eyes and justlisten.

And fuck me, the sensation is always immediate and overpowering.

With my eyes shut, and my fingers twitching, desperate to grab hold of my paintbrush, I become someone else entirely. No longer me, I becomemore. I become a vessel through which magic flows, a body filled with colour, with sound, with light and dark, with pain and elation, with suffering and freedom.

I get a physical reaction as much as a mental and emotional one. Ifeelthe notes seeping into my skin, flooding my veins, travelling through my bloodstream with every frantic, overstimulated heartbeat. Musical notes reform into startling swathes of colour, the singer’s voice exploding into violent paint strokes behind my eyes. Then a kind of magic descends, and I can see the artwork begin to form with every rapid fluttering, frantic, throbbing of my pulse. Each note is a metaphorical dip of my paintbrush into colour, reshaping, twirling, swirling into glorious, painful, all-consuming, delirious art.

In those moments, as I allow myself to listen, I become obsessed. I fall deeply in love with the sound, the voice, but mostly, the mesmerising, mind-alteringcolour. I’m both trapped and wholly, and completely free. My body trembles, my jaw grits, my bones rattle, my cells spark and alight.

Then, as the last notes linger in the air, other sounds filter in, adding more stimulation to an already overstimulated brain. It’s in that moment, as the music is replaced with everyday sounds, that an unknown force drives me back to my loft to paint. Overcome with the need to purge myself of the colour swarming in my head and onto the canvas, immortalising it forever.

Nothingelse matters.

Not the grumble of my belly needing sustenance. Not the lonely ache in my chest for companionship, understanding, acceptance, and certainly not the buzz of my phone in my back pocket telling me my father has called me for the fiftieth time that week. No doubt in an attempt to guilt-trip me, or bully me into returning home. All that matters is my need to paint.

It’s all that has ever mattered.

Art is freedom, expression, hope. My neurodiversity, a colour-splattered palace I never want to escape from.

For years my father tried to cure me of my ‘sickness’, his words not mine. He spent thousands of pounds on private healthcare, on endless hours of therapy, and when that didn’t work he’d try to use cruel words to drive the so-called sickness out of me.

I’m everything he hates.

I’m different.

Unable to shape me into the perfect son, my father made my life a misery. Divorcing my mother a year ago was his final attempt at breaking me. He knows that she’s the only person who truly understands the real me. Her love has always been a grounding force that has kept me from falling headfirst intodepression. To her my uniqueness is a gift, something that should be nurtured, encouraged,welcomed.

She was the one who gave me my first set of paintbrushes and paint. She was the one who stood me in front of a blank canvas as a young boy and pressed her lips against my ear whispering to me those sweet words I’ve never forgotten.

“You’re father is wrong. You have a gift. So when it all becomes too overwhelming, paint, my darling. Paint what you hear, what you feel. Embrace who you are. Embrace the music and the colour it fills your existence with. You are loved. I love you. Trust in that. Always.”

But for my father, my existence is nothing but a curse. My paintbrush, the blade he never wanted his son to yield. I’m a disappointment, an embarrassment.

Well, fuck him.

Fuck that man and everything he stands for.

Fuck that person he wants to mould me into.

Fuck that life.

So here I am, focussing on the ground beneath my feet, thousands of miles away from home as I traverse through a crowd of people, most of them heading out for a night dancing at the clubs, or drinking at one of the bars that line the streets. Unlike them, I walk against the tide, heading back to my loft for a night of solace, needing those moments of silence to regroup, to recentre myself until I’m ready to remove my headphones once again and fall into a world where only colour exists, and my soul is free to express myself with art.

“Look where you’re going, asshole!” a burly fucker shouts as he shoulders into me, knocking my headphones off as he passes by.

“Fuck,” I grunt, shoved sideways as a sudden flood of sound bombards my ears as the prick strides off, giving me the middle finger as a parting shot.

I open my mouth to curse his retreating back, but the words don’t come. Instead, my spine snaps straight and a cascade of goosebumps covers my flesh as a haunting voice rises above the tide of Brooklyn’s orchestra and floods my senses, swamping my vision with a dazzling array of colour. Bright red pulses at the corners of my vision, blurring into burnt orange and sun yellow, narrowing into a pin-prick of virgin white, teased and tormented by swirls of cerulean blue, and damask pink that bubbles outwards, consuming a velvety purple. Ripples of colour form and reshape, constantly moving, ever shifting and changing form.

“Christ!” I exclaim.

Unable to move, my discarded headphones forgotten, I find myself stuck in a vortex of stimulation that batters every part of my mind, body and soul. I’m vaguely aware of thunder rumbling overhead, the humidity caused by a long week of scorching late August sunshine finally making way for a cooler few days. Rain begins to fall, and the squeals of laughter and shouts of surprise barely register as people rush past me for shelter from the sudden deluge.

I’m drenched in seconds, my headphones shunted across the pavement by another passerby as my mouth parts on a guttural moan.

Who the fuck is that?

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