Our friend group loved going on adventures together. I remember the first time we all hung out. It was at a bonfire at someone's house, who I didn't know. In fact, I didn't know anyone there except for him. We were still young in our relationship, but in a car of 2 other people, the only person I knew in that moment and that I felt comfortable with was him. He wrapped me in a kind of warmth and security that can only be explained by the feeling. I took in every detail in that moment. There was no music playing, only the white noise of the tires against the pavement. No wind, not any audible conversation, just the silent hold of the spontaneity. Not that we'd get any kind of signal way out there anyway. The moon shone into the backseat, illuminating and broadening all of his features. I still remember how his jacket felt. How everything interacted with everything around it.
We were way too old to continue going on field trips, but we all wanted to go to an art museum together, so we did after school. We all walked around pretending to be interested in most of them. Some were interesting, but many of them were just a smudge that were somehow qualified to be in a museum. Me and him stuck by each other, with our friends passing by every once in a while. There was one painting I wanted to stand at for longer than the others. It was a painting by Mark Stock called The Butler's in Love #25. In it, a butler is shown deep in thought. I wanted to have a moment to try to figure out what about.
"I wonder what he's thinking about," I said, getting lost in my own little world in my mind.
"He could be thinking about any number of things."
I read the information card after I thought I had it figured out. It said, "For years, Mark Stock searched for just the right artistic vocabulary to express his passions. He identified with the unrequited love repeatedly enacted by the silent movie star, writer and director Charlie Chaplin as the Little Tramp. It was not until he broke up with a girlfriend that Stock found inspiration for his series of over 100 works, The Butler's in Love. The artist said 'It was a painful breakup for the both of us. The sadness inspires the butler paintings... It was if I'd finally found a keyhole into my soul.' Stock and his friends pose for photographs on which the painter bases the images. In each, a servant is unable to openly express his love for his mistress. Each painting captures a different conception of a moment when the devoted butler grapples with the impossibility of his desire." There was something about it that just said a lot. It looks like an ordinary painting until you know the story.
As we were getting ready to leave, we discovered a very dimly lot room, with one single painting on display. A painting of a man playing a piano in the middle of the sea. It was called Ocean Music. We were all ready to go, but he wanted to stay and look at it longer, so I stayed behind with him. He said he could feel the sea foam on his legs as if he were in the painting. I thought about this painting and what he said about it often after it happened. How it foreshadowed all of the events that followed closely behind.
Our biggest and most explosive trip was to go on a cruise for our senior trip. Little did we know it'd be our last.
Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.
