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He walks through a hall and runs his hands across the claustrophobic walls; they close in. His weaponry: a rotten paintbrush, worn from use, charcoal and paint tubes clinking side by side against the alluring white of his trench coat. A canvas in one hand, regret bleeding out from the other. He is made to live and breathe art, yet the walls still slam into his woebegone sides on each journey. It begins to be hard to breathe.
But it’s not good at all… Ahh. Why am I so bad?
He must teach. He must bring light to somebody else’s life, if not his own. He has failed.
Being a teacher’s just another thing I’m not meant for.
Hashida’s back fades into the crowd as he once again lifts his face into a perceived form of happiness. All smiles. He must remain a pillar of hope for the children whose one wish is just to draw. To be good enough. To set a brush on canvas one more time, again, again, and again. They will wake and go to bed with unending fervor until they unlearn the process by the hands of adults.
You’re really observant, Yatora says, words pouring out of his mouth, unknowing of the effect it has on him. To Hashida, Yatora just speaks. Occasionally it will be accompanied by a retort or a wise word, but he speaks to fill silence.
All I do is observe.
All I do is observe, Hashida says, words falling out of his mouth in a delicate manner of speech to explain himself as easy as breathing, but yet he tiptoes around truths and leaves them half-said. His life is easier this way; people look at him in a way that they can understand. It is a simple way to live, but it is a life he can bear. He will remain as an object of observation as long as he lives.
All I do is observe, Yatora hears, letting the words ring in his head, rebounding off of the calcified edges of bone surrounding his brain. The rusty edges of Hashida’s words are a buzzkill to whatever smile that remained on his face after previous events. In his head, Hashida is eccentric, and whatever he does should be chalked up to being evident of such. Yatora will never look at Hashida the same, after this.
All I do is observe.
He will repeat the words until they solidify on his tongue and drag him down like a bird being hit with a stone; plummeting to the earth’s floor below with a dull thunk and the crack of bone. He is the bird, in this way, but his life remains to be the vulture circling over now long-dead prey rotting away on the concrete.
So Hashida surrounds himself with work, watching from a distance, helping in small ways, offering a cat’s smile in exchange for one far more ingenuine thrown his way. He becomes the overseer to many people’s lives, immersing himself in them, for he knew how to do nothing else as well as this. People are something he unconsciously knows to pick apart and leave to dry, yet he reaps no benefit from sitting on the sand of the crowded beach as a lonely bystander. He would much rather stand alone in an art classroom, filled to the brim with people, bare of all the clothes that covered him, standing far taller as a model instead of the artist. Draw me as I am, he thinks, for I am much better at watching than doing.
Hashida has always thought differently. He had always looked at things and seen something that others somehow didn’t; seen something that was tucked so far away into the mass of detail that it was barely noticeable, but nothing could hide from a truly sharp eye. He could stick his hands into the grimy world of every painting and pull out something only his eye could have noticed.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Except that when you have an eye that can see everything, even the most beautiful things assume the shape of a soulless monster.
Why live a life that has no meaning?
Why work if it has no meaning?
Why get up if it has no meaning?
The words are a reflection of himself in the way that a mirror portrays a picture of a person more beautiful than they are. Time came and passed, etching lines of worry and stress into his face.
All smiles.
Hashida pulled out his braids and raked his hands through his tangled hair, letting it cascade over his shoulders, back, waist. This is art to him, this is a symbol of his dedication. It is an example of something materialistic at best, but it is still a way to cling onto his hopeless dream to live on. Work on. Walk on.
What’s art to you?
The resounding crack of the pomegranate as it split and spilled red onto Hashida’s worn hands.
The small patter of loose seeds falling onto the cutting board and floor.
I’ve made that into art, once, he thinks.
The thoughts that rushed through his head as he tore through one art book after the other, poring over dense paragraphs explaining everything about every artist who had ever lived long enough to receive attention.
That isn’t art.
Watching from the sidelines isn’t art.
So Hashida drags himself through life, the question weighing him down like a ball and chain tied to a bruised ankle. He makes piece after piece with symbolism that doesn’t even make sense to him at the rate that he was going. Canvas after canvas of failed attempts fill his room as he pulls ideas from his head only to watch them distort and fall apart when he takes his brush; his heart and his soul to breathe life into them.
All I do is observe.
His artwork is a taunt, leering at him from each edge of his room, spilling out from the drawers; pinned onto the walls. It laughs at him every time he begins a new piece in hope that it will be better than the last. It claws at his lungs when the smell of oil and turpentine wrenches its way into his airways, never to leave, always to stay. He cannot escape from it, yet he embraces it and the chaos of it only to turn tail and run when things “get hard.”
Number 0, The Fool.
New beginnings, new hope, new adventures.
The telescope in his hand twinkles as the white dog by his feet bites at his heels. He lets the white rose go and sets down his bag packed for the travels, trodding down a path far away from where he wishes he was not meant to be. He was a brand new person in his eyes, but his hands still made the same mistakes, time and time again. It is more of a habit ingrained in his mind than a physical choice he decides to make.
What’s art to you, Hashida, what’s art to you?
Self expression came to turn to self hatred. Not a diary, not a picture book, not a torn collage.
I’ll get to see the artwork of examinees from all over Japan, yeah?
So Hashida sits, back to the audience, and begins his performance. Deep purples and harsh pinks whirl across his vision and he sees them drip across his hands.
What’s art to you, Hashida, what’s art to you? All you do is look at other people; do you ever look in the mirror and see yourself, or is it just a mixed stew of everyone’s perception of you? Are you truly you? When you look at yourself, what do you see? What’s art to you, Hashida, what’s art to you?
With the world as your audience, will you keep turning your back to something that you can’t escape?
This.
This isn’t art.
Has it always been this way?
The brush is a ghost in his hand as it clatters to the floor, his audience vanishing with it.
Truth is, I’m actually bad at making art.
I love art, I love people who make art, and I make art myself, but the more I get to know other people who make art, the more it makes me think I can’t go as far as them.
I respect people who can keep their brush moving with tears in their eyes.
He clasps his hands over his face; an ineffective muffler against the battering ram of memories against his brain.
But I’m not special.
Anyone who has the strength to get up and draw is special. Anyone who breathes to draw is special. He is not special, but this child in front of him is. She gets up, he sits down. He tapes the back of the drawing and hands it to her like a talisman against harm. If he must act as the beacon for her hope, he will.
Good as new.
Hashida sighs, leaning back on the chair he was sitting on, setting down all his supplies.
Hashida, you’re the type of person who sees too much, Yatora says, careless of how his speech swamps out all possibility of even a remotely constructive conversation.
They walk on.
Hashida reaches his door, letting it creak open. He is home, and so he is one with the organized wreckage of his living space. He breathes in; out. His hands move with a mind of their own as he organizes pile after pile of dense books, names and pieces flying through his mind at a glimpse of each one.
Felix Gonzales-Torres, made his installations out of candy. They looked mundane, but his eye caught on to the meaning after skimming over a brief overview.
Each piece of candy taken from the pile symbolizes the wasting away of somebody the artist cared about.
The artist cared enough to make this, so it must have a purpose.
If a pile of candy could be art, what is art?
A concept, and so an idea.
An idea, and so an action.
An action, which breathes life into supplies.
The supplies, now ready, create art.
The Fool, guided by the puppet strings that have snapped off long ago, but his body still moves the same way.
The Fool, pictured on his way to a new life.
The Fool, braids trailing behind him, turning tail to run like a coward.
The Fool, letting himself go.
I’m not very good at drawing.
He wasn’t even sure who he was anymore.
Skill after skill built on earthquake-ravaged foundation.
Even the strongest spackle can’t make up for the deepest holes in the wall.
All I do is observe.
A keen eye catching on every movement that every person does, over analyzing anything that moved.
Being a teacher’s just another thing I’m not meant for.
Student after student in an after school room, looking up to him like a sort of god.
What’s art to you, Hashida?
He lives it, and so he loves it.
He loves it, and so he hates it more than anything.
It is a reflection of his twisted self hidden behind shards and barricades.
He is the art he makes just as much as the art his hands create is him. He pours a bit of himself into each piece.
Soon he will have nothing left to pour.
Everything is in his head, but when has that ever meant that it isn’t real?
I am real.
What I make is real.
So he walks on, unminding of the storm that follows him like a plague never leaves its newly acquired vessel for pain.
He walks on, pushing his hands against the walls of the once-claustrophobic hallway: he no longer needs permission to perform for the audience.
The wounds of regret bleeding out on his hands start to close and scab over.
All in due time.
He sets the canvas down.
All smiles.
The paint, the brushes, and even the smell invade his senses again.
Old friends.
Each day like the last, Hashida takes the boredom and replays it. He will reap what he sows into his own life and walk out responsible.
For beauty is in the eye of the beholder.