Bright Pastels

I want to experience all the bright colours, all the loud noises, all the exquisite sensations that the world has to offer. I want to take everything the world gives. But I want to live in that pure pastel shade that is good and give what little I have to offer back to the world. And I don't know if I can do both.

I have seen the world's beauties and learnt how to compose a moment so that it is full of a richness and a symmetry and those contrasts of emotions that I crave so much. And I have learnt how to barter and to pay the minimum price for participating in the finest of things which society can create. And it has felt like learning to live. Reality has started to mimic the paintings and books and films that depict drama and romance and tragedy. And that has made reality feel more real than a simple existence could ever feel.

But this simple existence, in becoming an observation by an outsider, has shifted in appearance. No longer white noise searching for an orchestral symphony, it now appears as the humble tune of a child performing their latest piano piece to their parents, elegant in its candor. The colours are pale because the object being painted is not the painter, but the painter's surroundings.

I have existed in the naive bubble of childhood and I have lived in the garish surroundings of the lavish cultures of the world. My eyes have been opened to appreciate its wonders and I will never stop yearning for those ornately artistic moments of laughing over a bottle of wine in the sunshine or crying on my way home, alone in the rain. I will never lose my taste in grandeur and sophistication. But part of me wants to turn away from it all and bask in a pale seashell sunlight, turning the camera away from myself and focusing on the graceful delicacy of the mundane. I have kept the self-portraits over which I took so much care to create dazzling versions of memories, but now I want to hand out my flawed sketches to their subjects. I have learnt how to step into the spotlight but I want to return to the ensemble.

I want to feel a bright sensation of living and I want to have a pure pastel feeling of goodness. Bright pastels.