What does love have to do with it?

We over-romanticise everything and don’t look at it for what it really is.

I’m an Artist, in every sense of the word, in every format or medium, in every breathable way. I used to colour worlds on the walls of my room as a child and that followed me into my adolescence. They would come to life at night. Literally. My elders taught me that I was channeling things that already exist. They’ve just been existing without form. And I was giving them a way to dimensionally appear and move about, which was fun to me, because it meant that I could choose the spirit(s) and worlds that I wanted to see, instead of them just appearing how and when they want. This was my first taste of creating my own world. In a way, it was the beginning of The Land of The Unknown, where my kins and I roam. What’s more, it was undeniably the beginning of my abilities manifesting themselves, before fully emerging. The beginning of XXXALKHEMEY.

It’s said that one of the best things about being loved by an Artist is that they’ll immortalise you. They’ll immortalise your experiences together. And essentially, they end up immortalising themselves. Never-ending. Undying. If they’re a Painter, they’ll paint you. They’ll paint their own worlds. And they’ll live on through both. If they’re a Musician, they’ll make songs, albums even, about you. They’ll turn a sonic experience into a motion picture of their mind, of their heart, and inevitably, their soul. They’ll live on through it all. Through their ideas of you, of themselves, of everything and everyone. Safe to say that they damn near play God. We… we damn near do. Artists. Everything that the world interacts with is a form of art or design, therefore, to that effect, nothing is without immortality. Everything is an immortalisation of what would otherwise, eventually, be considered “null and void,” forgotten, or weakened in existence at some point.

Through the pen, through the brush, through the mic, we enable infinite lives to live on as one infinite life altogether, as The Oneness (or whatever idea of God you choose). Although they will already live on without us, we give them immeasurable power to continue to, vibrantly and fully. Transcending reincarnation. Creative Moksha. To be an Artist is to drink the tonic of eternal youth. Sipping from an ever-flowing river of beauty.

The boy learned that the liquid part of the Master Work was called the Elixir of Life, and that it cured all illnesses; it also kept the alchemist from growing old. (Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist, p. 83)

I drew a huge black rock on a wall of my childhood room once. It looked like an abstract work of art, like an otherworldly artifact, yet it was probably one of the most realistic things I’d ever drawn at the time. Detailed with texture and lighting, I felt like I could feel every facet and nanoscopic ridge. I could hear it speak. When it first spoke to me, it literally said,