Art beyond the matter

 

Dear,

Living in such a confined cell, with your life reduced and restricted, is naturally crushing. Even when I felt trapped within four walls of my own thoughts, I never felt as much like a prisoner as you do. I still had some sense of freedom, but you are plainly captive among those gray walls. And yet you are strong. You have endured this for years. It is no longer something new for you.

Tell me: when pain is not momentary, does it not become something you can adapt to? For you it has turned from a situation into a structure. You carry a weight heavier than what many adults bear, and you are still standing. Please hold on to that rare resilience. There are moments when you feel as if the air thickens around you, as if you are underwater, burning with the need to rise to a surface that isn’t really there. I feel this too sometimes. But you do not need air, because your imagination can and should help you to breathe underwater.

Lately you have been writing to me less, and this troubles me. Did someone do something to you? Or are you drifting away from me? Or… am I simply not reaching you anymore? I cannot break the metal bars. The fact that we can communicate at all is already a miracle. You would leave the notes you wrote for me just outside the bars, and I would slip through the forest’s trees and shrubs to take them without anyone noticing, and leave my own letters under the stone for you in return. I never threw them inside because I thought they would notice. That is why we placed them under our stone. We even carved our initials into its surface, remember?

I admit something: I watched you many times while you slept. I loved you silently, and maybe you felt it. Perhaps my gaze reached you like a lullaby, pulling you deeper into your dreams. You slept so gently, so peacefully. Maybe your mind was offering you a world better than this one. I am sure you often wished to remain there forever.

I never dared to wake you, afraid of stealing your rest. There were nights you stayed awake just to meet me. Those moments were precious. I stroked your hair softly. You yielded so easily to my hand. The softness of your cheeks became something unforgettable beneath my fingers. I wish you were always here so I could keep playing with them, though I fear too much of that might make them sag. Perhaps the little moments are more valuable.

I would point at the moon you could see from your cell. I wanted its light to remind you of me. Whenever it lit your cell, I wanted you to remember that my spirit was inside. Would you not have wanted us to run away together, leaving all this nonsense behind?

Since you often slept at night, I tried coming during the day instead. People were busy then, so I was able to regularly visit a street vendor to get the postcard pictures I give you. He is an old man I met a few weeks ago, quiet and thoughtful. He distributes these postcards freely as gifts, as long as he has plenty. One evening, after we encountered each other on the street, we fell into a deep conversation. I want to tell you this because it felt valuable.

He discovered his talent for drawing as a child. The world felt too colorless to him, he said. Adding contrast to a black-and-white film: that is how he described it. He hid in his imagination to escape reality, until eventually his dreams became his truest reality, through his paintings. Like you, my dear, he felt suffocated by existing without even existing, and so he built a home inside his mind.

He told me he never joined the other children’s games. Instead, he watched from afar. On one of the days when he claimed he was going out to have fun with his friends, he wandered the streets alone and stumbled upon a small clearing where an old wooden treehouse stood. For a child to roam the streets like that was, of course, dangerous, but he didn’t care. All he wanted was to find a little quiet. And what kind of child seeks solitude to rest, withdrawing from people as if seeking refuge? The exhaustion must have been immense, not born of experience but of feeling.

When he climbed into the treehouse, a wide landscape opened before him. Trees nearby, green flat valleys in the distance, and on the horizon mountains capped with snow. It was sunset, and the sight captivated him. As he walked deeper inside, he found a workshop filled with scribbled drafts and crossed-out paintings. Brushes, palettes, and piles of pencils lay scattered across a table. It resembled the abandoned refuge of some hermit-painter.

The moment he saw all those tools, the first feeling that rose inside him was the urge to paint, though he had never felt anything so strong before. He couldn’t resist. He pulled a canvas toward the balcony where he could see the view, set it in place, sat on a stool, and began to paint. At first he tried to capture nature as it was, but soon found that too rigid. He set aside the idea of rules and began painting nature as he saw it. He couldn’t answer the question, “Why should I be bound to the outside world?” So he changed the very meaning of “nature,” believing that nature was not the thing itself but the impressions it left on a person.

When he finished, he liked what he had created. Someone else might have called it nothing but a scribble, yet what looked like a mere sketch to others was an entire universe to him. Since he couldn’t take the painting home, he left it there and returned, telling his family he had had great fun with his friends and wanted to go out like that more often. It may look like a lie at first glance, but in a sense it was true, because friends don’t have to be humans; a canvas and a brush can be your most loyal and understanding companions.

From then on, he always left home under the pretense of going out to play, but actually he went to that place. He would slip away unseen down empty, quiet streets, follow a path through a wooded area, and from there reach a broad field of green grass. In the treehouse, there were times when he spent hours alone, sometimes painting, sometimes just watching the view. Yet he rarely felt lonely; he was solitary. And even in that, he was accompanied by his surroundings; nature spoke to him.

But there was an unpleasant matter:  he was running out of blank canvases. He had filled them all and added each one to his growing collection. What should he do in such a situation? Would he suddenly dismiss his own passion as a mere passing whim and abandon it? He couldn’t tell his family he needed more canvases, because they would start asking questions. But if he got money, he could buy them himself.

So he began saving the allowance he received from his parents and spent it at the stationery shops. People naturally noticed a solitary child who came regularly to buy blank canvases, and sometimes brushes and pencils, and they began to wonder about the story behind it. Over time rumors spread around the neighborhood. His family remained unaware until the day his father saw him.

The boy usually chose times when his family was busy to go to the shop so he wouldn’t be caught, lowering his risk. But this time his father had already heard the rumors about a child buying art supplies, and curiosity pushed him to investigate. Instead of working at the time he normally would have been occupied, he slipped out to follow his son. He trailed him quietly, watching from corners, blending into crowds.

Eventually he saw his own son through the shop window, buying blank canvases. He could hardly believe it. Was that really his child? Where was he taking them? Why was he doing all this?

He decided to keep following him, silently. He stayed at a distance, hiding behind tree trunks so the boy wouldn’t notice. He watched him reach the treehouse, climb its steps, carefully place the canvases on the table, then set one on the easel on the balcony. The boy sat down and immediately began to paint with total absorption.

The man watched him for minutes. What was he supposed to make of this? Was this the place his son had been coming to for months?

He finally decided to confront him. As he climbed the wooden steps, the creaking went unheard because the boy was so deeply immersed in that other world he slipped into when painting. The father had to touch his shoulder to make him realize he was here.

The boy only looked at him, quietly. Yet inside he felt both terror and anger, as if his “hidden utopia” had been violated. His father was not a man with obvious vices. He did not drink, did not gamble away money, did not beat his child. But he was profoundly indifferent and incapable of understanding. The child’s inner world had never interested them. In their view, feeding him and keeping him full was enough, and that counted as love.

His father did not shout at him, did not insult him, did not yell for him to leave at once. But perhaps he did something heavier than all of that. In a completely calm, detached, yet oppressive tone, he said, “You need to stop this.”

“Why?” the child asked.

The answer he received was that this new hobby would “lead him away from becoming an engineer.”

Like many children of that place and that time, his family wanted him to become an engineer. It was among the professions that earned the most money and was considered relatively easy to secure. But the child had no interest in it at all. No one had ever asked him what he wanted. They did not even know what he was talented in.

Hearing this, the child said nothing. He had long convinced that nothing he said would change anything. His father then stepped into the workshop and found himself facing what looked like a small art gallery, walls filled with painted pictures and canvases. The boy had created all of them within just a few months. The man lifted a few to look at them more closely. All of them were about nature. They could not be called professional, but they were undeniably passionate. And there was not a single trace of civilization in them. No people, no vehicles, no buildings. Just... pure nature.

The paintings contained things he had never seen before, both imagined and real. For example, the child had never seen snow, but from things he had overheard from people and read from newspaper stories, he had formed an image of it in his mind: white and cold. 

The fantastical elements, on the other hand, were things not of this world. Sometimes they were towering trees, sometimes tiny mountains crushed under the feet of enormous insects. He had drawn animals resembling living versions of things like a “hollow-gnawer” or a “leaf bird.” In truth, their inspiration came from the landscape around him, because there were plenty of trees, insects, animals, and mountains there. But instead of drawing them as they were, he filtered them through himself.

When his father asked, surprised, why he drew such things, the child said, “They are the only things that feel beautiful to me. When they are my creation, they are always mine. They never leave me.”

“Who leaves you?” his father asked, finding it strange for a child to say such a thing.

What he did not know was that this very question was proof of a long-completed abandonment. It was evidence of alienation. And a child cannot prove anything to an alien.

His father, realizing he would get no answer, simply told him to leave. The child obeyed so his head would not get into trouble and went home. The next day, when he again asked permission to go outside, he went to the treehouse. But the place had been emptied. There was nothing left. Only the wooden table remained. Where had all the paintings gone? Had his father sold them? He did not know. But he knew now that everything had been exposed.

Years passed like this. He kept his passion for painting alive in secret, drawing under the pretense of studying, and whenever he went out, he still visited the treehouse from time to time. That place had become sacred to him. Perhaps the paintings had merged with nature itself. They were no longer physical. They were inside him. They had not vanished; they had become him.

In time he grew into an adult and spent decades working as an engineer, among other petty jobs. Being condemned to such a mechanical profession felt like an insult to his artistic soul, but he kept working solely to save money. During those years, first his mother and then, a few years later, his father died and were buried. He never visited their graves. The only thing he possessed now was freedom. A very late freedom. A freedom with no witnesses. But freedom nonetheless.

The life he had imagined was a nomadic one. Taking the money he had saved, he left his home and took to the streets, living in temporary settlements. He spoke with the hungry in soup kitchens, witnessed the lives of the poor up close in shelters. He became an old man who wandered the neglected slum neighborhoods of the city, giving free drawings to children who painted colorful pictures on gray walls, and who was especially loved by the working class, seen as a friend.

That is how I happened to be walking through one of these poor neighborhoods. Suddenly, a street wall painted with an extraordinary natural landscape caught my eye. It was unlike the crude ugliness of walls covered with curses, sexual imagery, or carved names. There was deliberate effort here. Only a pure soul could have done this. A soul that recognizes the soul. The moment I sensed this, I understood that an artist was roaming this neighborhood, aware of all this misery, and drawing strength precisely from it.

I began walking through the streets, hoping to come across someone extraordinary. Children were playing games, their families watching from windows, hanging laundry, cooking, or chatting. Everyone was occupied. I drifted among them like a ghost. I was glad to be there. The rest of the city does not speak to me.

As I walked, the graffiti began to form a pattern. Someone was clearly saturating these streets with paintings. So the painter had to be nearby. If not at that moment, then definitely soon. While I stood absorbed, staring at one of the images pulling me inward, a child told me that everyone there knew the person who drew them. I asked who it was. He described his appearance and told me where he might be. I nodded silently in thanks and walked in that direction.

After passing through a few narrow streets, I saw an old man surrounded by children, with a stand he had set down in the middle of the road. He was sitting on the pavement, and the children were looking at his drawings. Approaching from behind, I realized they were portraits. But not portraits of the children as they were. Rather, they were portraits of their “ideal” selves. Whatever hero or heroine a child imagined themselves to be, that was what the man drew. He was not making the concrete more concrete; he was making the abstract tangible.

I watched them from a distance until the children, laughing, ran off to play ball at the other end of the street. Then only the man sitting on the pavement and I remained. The conditions I had been waiting for had formed.

Just as the old man stood up and moved toward his stand, I calmly asked him, “Why?” The reason itself did not matter to me. I was not even asking that. I only wanted to draw attention to what he was doing. As if to say, “I know what you are doing despite everything.”

He turned to look at me, slightly startled, trying not to show it.

“Because I can’t tolerate grayness. That’s all,” he said.

I understood that “that’s all” did not mean he was brushing it off, but that he continued nonetheless without seeking importance in it. I don’t know if you understand these things the way I do, or if it only seems that way to me. But I think I am not the only one who thinks like this. Because when I said to him, “But it seems to me that what adds color to your colors is precisely this colorlessness,” he replied, “Exactly. It is the absence of art that pushes me toward being an artist.”

He spoke my language. Those who have lived in comfort do not know this language. It is a private language spoken among souls deepened by pain.

I asked him, "You're clearly a different person. Would it be okay if we talked for a while?"

We began speaking, sitting on the sidewalk. His voice was polite and soft, yet carried sharpness and certainty. His face, now closer to mine, revealed wrinkles and age spots that told of a long life. There was a story in his face, a lifetime of experiences.

Perhaps thinking I was someone who knew how to listen, he shared quite a bit, and it was through this that I managed to learn all that I could about him.

At one point, he asked, "Do you write? Or do you also draw like me?"

"I don't draw, but I write. Why?" I asked.

"You have that writer and philosopher air about you," he said. How could he see me so accurately? I had told you before: certain others, too, had walked the same roads we had.

Then he asked what was in the notebook I had in my pocket, if it wouldn't be rude. I told him it was my "thought journal," where I wrote down things that came to mind throughout the day.

He wanted to see it, so I handed it to him. He began reading carefully. It was obvious he was a well-read person. Someone who wouldn’t have noticed the notebook at all wouldn't have cared for the details.

For a few minutes, he quietly flipped through the pages. Meanwhile, I watched the children playing, and I found it dizzying to know that beside me were lives nearing their end, while others were just beginning. However, it could have been the other way around: maybe children are born dead and the elderly are nearing birth.

He looked up at me after a while and said, "You have thoughts that shouldn't be shared with everyone," in a tone that sounded more like a compliment than anything else.

He didn’t seem surprised. It was as if he had encountered such thoughts before. He wasn’t admiring me so much as approving of a student.

Then he made a proposition: "You’ll write for me, and I will draw inspiration from your writings. In exchange, I’ll turn them into paintings. A trade: pen for brush."

I agreed. I loved writing. And he loved painting. The thought of my ideas transforming into landscapes delighted me. He seemed to value writing as much as I did, and his face showed the kind of satisfaction one might have when adding to a collection. He could have been a writer, no doubt.

"Why don't you write?" I asked him.

He paused for a moment, his gaze distant, as if the question had stirred something buried deep inside him. Then, with a slow exhale, he replied, his voice softer now, almost as if speaking to himself:

"Writing… is like opening a door to a world I no longer wish to live in. When I was younger, I wrote. I filled pages with thoughts and dreams. But every time I wrote, it was as if I was reaching for something beyond me, something I could never quite grasp. The words felt… heavy. The more I wrote, the more I felt like I was losing myself in them."

He paused again, looking down at the notebook in his hands, tracing the edges with his thumb.

"Then, one day, I realized… I was writing to fill a void. To try and make sense of the chaos in my mind. But I found a different way to deal with it. I started painting instead. The brush lets me lose myself in a world that isn’t confined by words. I can express what I feel without needing to understand it first. The colors, the strokes—they don’t ask me to explain myself. They just are."

He looked back at me, his eyes a bit clearer, as if the act of saying these things had made something click.

"So no, I don't write anymore; I found a way to breathe without trying to capture the air in my hands."

I sat there for a moment, trying to digest his words. They felt like a confession, not just about writing, but about a part of him that he had long since given up trying to understand. I loved his response.

After that, we said goodbye and went our separate ways. I returned home and used everything I had lived through as inspiration for the story I was already writing. Perhaps it would become one of the texts I would give him. Perhaps he would paint the two of us.

From that day on, we began meeting regularly. There was a steady exchange between us: words for images, images for words. The idea of bringing something to you came to me precisely then. That is why I began getting as many postcards as the man allowed. Because I knew you loved imagining just as much as he did.

He can paint gray walls. But you, in your cell, are forced only to look at them. Yet with your imagination, you can still paint them. You don’t even need a brush. I began to bring the postcards not for the images themselves, but for the imagination they awaken. Perhaps the only true artwork is imagination itself.

I fill your room with those postcards so you remember how unreal the reality around you is. I made it a habit to slip at least ten into every letter. You thanked me so many times because they helped you. They helped you hold on to art. And an artist must hold on to art. If they are prevented from doing so, they must learn, if necessary, to transcend perception itself.

For you, those images are what is real. Not the world surrounding you. Please imagine yourself inside them. Lose yourself there. Because remember the thing the world makes you forget so often: you do not live here; you live there.

Those postcards come from an old man who never stopped drawing. You must not stop imagining either, no matter the cons. Draw what comes to your mind on the papers I bring you. But be careful. Hide them under your pillow. Don’t let the gray, sulking silhouettes take them away and accuse you of a crime just because you were passionate.

The man says he never painted nature as it truly was. Then why should you be as you are expected to be? You should be as you truly are. The person you are is not the one inside that cell. It is your vessel, not you. The real you is free beyond those bars; it is the one who exists beyond the concrete.

Hold my hands, and let us drift through realities. They cannot catch us there. Not here. Even if they do, they will be no more than hallucinations.

Let us dream together while we sleep. Let us stay awake at the same hour and think of one another. Let us meet in dreams. Then let us turn them into writing. I will write the beginning, you will write the end, and we will combine them. Then I will turn them into images and bring them back to you. Then we will flee into them... to our home.

In that picture, you will not see a picture but a door opening into our dimension.

And one day will come when the door no longer needs an image.

And even if that day never comes, it will not matter. Because we will already have lived where it was true.

There it is. I think this is all. This has probably become the longest letter I have ever written to you. I didn’t want to leave out a single detail, so I tried to fit everything inside it. And I know you won’t be bored by even a single syllable, that you will read it all with the same passion with which I wrote it for you.

When you receive this letter, there will be many new images inside it. Please sort through them and choose the ones you like most. Let us imagine those together. I will stay awake tonight with you. While you sleep in your bed, awake within your reality, I will be awake at my desk, asleep inside my dream. But both of us will be conscious... just in different ways.

Please write back to me as soon as possible. I am looking forward to your kind words.

Good night now, my dear…

Atrona.