Art as Seen From a Bed
I feel as if I am in a food court of a shopping mall, however, to be completely honest: I have no idea where I am, aside from sitting at a table, across from another human being. This human is a friend; I am visiting with a friend. He is a very talented guitar player. On a spectrum of deep friendship to acquaintance, I suppose we are closer to the later. We have never been typically close, however I certainly do not think of him as an enemy or someone that I hate—so he would best be described as a friend. I only mention this to help qualify my relationship with him.
He is a rather gifted musician—meant mainly in the sense that he has strived, and continuously worked to reach towards the stratosphere of excellence as an electric guitar player and performer. I do not recall our conversation in depth. I do know that it had to do with guitar and him taking a playful jab at himself, feeling as if he is using chorus all the time, as if it were by request or not a choice of his own doing. He sort of made a comparison to him feeling like Andy Summers from the rock band The Police. Chorus is an audio affect, a guitar effect that doubles a signal and offsets that second signal; in other words, it is a very quick delay, perceived by the human brain as a swirling and churning sound, thick and delightful. He said that he felt like he plays every song with his chorus pedal on.
This friend and I are not particularly close, as mentioned previously, so I ask if he would like to hang out for a longer duration; perhaps we can get to know one another better—become closer friends. I do not recall whether this was something that he found agreeable and enjoyable. I do however feel that he invited me over to one of his friend’s houses to hangout.
We found ourselves in a room. A room that looked unfamiliar to me, yet somewhat familiar.. It felt like a drug dealer’s room. But to be honest, I do not recall any discernible evidence of this notion within the room, aside from the general feeling of that association. Besides, what does a typical drug dealer room look like, anyway? At any rate, all three of us were sitting on the floor. Two friendly dogs arrived at some point in time. The other two people in the room sort of took a backseat in my mind; they became part of the peripheral. My attention was very focused on the dogs. They were quite playful and enjoyable to be around. I played with both of them on the floor. Wrestling around in good horseplay for a period of time. They were big dogs. They could be aggressive, but they weren’t. They very much enjoyed my company, and I enjoyed theirs.
Having tired of this activity, I retreated back to sitting position on the floor close to the bed, and noticed that my host’s bed had a beautiful piece of artwork that started directly above his bed’s headboard, and sprawled upwards, in a secondary and third canvas, onto his ceiling. It was one continuous piece of art. I remember swirls of oranges and yellows. Very atmospheric, brush strokes that swirled and collided and coincided with one another as if it were currents of color—not a portrait of an image as far as I could tell. More abstract in that sense. There were words on it, or something that appeared to be words—but in all honesty, it was indiscernible to me as a language with any meaning behind it. It came across as a beautiful piece of art and if it spoke, it said something beautiful that my eyes appreciated. I thought it were clever that it was something my host, and myself by extension, could appreciate from say, where I sat, but also as something he could appreciate while lying in bed.
There were thoughts of Chicago and wondering when it begins to snow there.
