an untitled piece on why people want to suffer for the things they love

a former praetorian guard finds himself bound to a tree.

night has fallen, and everyone has deserted him. everyone except his god, he believes, who joins him in exile.

the cool evening air makes him hypersensitive to the trauma inflicted on his body. blood steadily leaks from his wounds. his flesh is riddled with arrows. his paling complexion closely resembles the luminescent, porcelain skin of the angels that are due to collect him.

he looks to the sky and waits.

there is a story, set in 14th century verona, of two teenage lovers from enemy families. in retrospect, their fate was already set.

their encounter takes place at a party, and they instantly fall in love. they make plans to marry the next day, but the universe didn’t particularly favour their union.

the term ‘star-crossed’ became synonymous with them for a reason.

it ends like this:

‘here, i will set up my everlasting rest, and shake the yoke of inauspicious stars from this world-wearied flesh…

thus, with a kiss, i die.’ the boy declares, under the guise his lover has died.

and when she wakes, and learns of what he has done, she too decides to reclaim her fate. they are found in each other’s arms.

an artist gazes into a mirror, and what stares back is a corpse.

their skin has become grey. the shadows and contours of their face have deepened, like fissures in scorched earth. unaccounted sleep has made their glassy eyes sink into the hollows of their skull.

it seems that in the midst of their infatuation with their work, they have forgotten how to keep themselves alive. the love of their life is now a parasite, bleeding them dry until all that’s left of them is a mere shell of their former self.

a part of their soul revels in the sight. resolute, they are determined to finish what they have started.

what kind of love, what kind of insane devotion drives the willingness to sacrifice?

abraham gave up his only child before god without a second thought.

icarus was so enamoured with the sun that he followed her, acutely aware that she would lead him to his death.

to love more than life is an insane concept, and yet an intrinsically human one. history is decorated with the stories of those who surrendered themselves to love and forwent reason, allowing it to mandate all their actions.

the artist drinks hemlock. they gut themselves on a balcony in tokyo. they are a descendant of icarus and abraham, of sebastian, of romeo and juliet. a lineage of martyrs who sacrificed themselves in the name of love.

and in such a lineage madness becomes genetic. self-preservation is supposedly instinctual but, in this bloodline, mutates into obsession.

because what is preservation for without a reason for survival?

the artist, the lover, the pious: they choose to self-inflict, to suffer, to orchestrate their own deaths for the sake of purpose. they are willing to pay for their devotion with their lives because it becomes the justification for their existence.

we create idols out of our fixations and call them things like god or sweetheart. we construct our lives in their likeness. like the moon with the sun, we worship them in orbit, and they are the centre of our universe. because what are we if not belonging to something else?

the birth of the world and everything that followed it, including our own conceptions, was entirely whimsical. we occupy obscurity and reside in unknowns. it is amidst this uncertainty that we so desperately try to grasp at any form of clarity. we hang onto our infatuations and declare them vocation, so that even in a life dictated by random occurrences, we can obtain even a morsel of control. a hand in our fate.

a novel is written in carmine ink. paint is pigmented by ashes. sheets of music are pictures of electrocardiograms, and steadfast heartbeats echo in the background of symphonies. the canvas is reminiscent of a tombstone; a brief synopsis of a life lived written into the fabrics. galleries are graveyards for the insane, filled with the countless souls of people that once were.

the artist commemorates a version of their character. a death was indispensable to the completion of their work. all the suffering, hardship and turmoil they endured becomes part of a beautiful narrative in which they emerge victorious because they survived. the past becomes perfect; chance occurrences become fate.

it is both beautiful and tragic. it is their decalcomania.

the artist must kill a self for a reason to live.

a.