The Lab
Dim lit candles burning from seven in the evening till whenever I take off to bed, which is usually never in the night or very late, complete silence, some sounds outside, a lot of noise on the inside (often), a mind full of dreams and a heart carrying everything of the past and hoping of the future while trying it’s best to live in the present, ideas ideas ideas. Words, magically profound words of the writers who have lived, knowledge from any and all sources and directions, cigarettes never running out, a heavy mind trying to figure out the one thing any artist in its time has tried to figure out: how to not compromise and be able to live independently alongside keeping the fire alive. The echoes of lost old friends, the madness of my own, the explanations of why this and how that, the reconsiderations of life choices and snapping out of it to come back to the heart, the heart of an honest, sincere artist. The heaviest thing in the world on nights like these and the most delicate thing when in love, which is all the time. In love with the world enough to be able to hate it, in love with everybody and every piece of earth, in love with life in love with lovers in love with words and pictures and suffering a perpetual melancholia, a constant nostalgia. Music floating in the air, all kinds of it, books piled up and scattered (read, unread and half done), empty unwashed mugs with coffee stains, cigarette buds, candle melting reminding me the passing of yet another day inside the Lab. Windows open when it rains and shut when it doesn’t, open for the light to enter at the glorious golden hour, camera, lenses, photo prints sitting there unsold, untouched, unreserved. Memories from many places scattered throughout the table, stones, crystals, dead leaves, a music bowl i stopped using, a buddha pen stand with pens and other things, a dusty book by Ram Das which shaped an entire generation of hippies, a journal or two with dreams and fears, desires and experiences, plans both fulfilled and failed weaved in them, a comb i hardly use these days, a lighter of course. I learnt to live with myself here.
