A NEW LOOK
Costume Designer | Aidan Skye Jameson
Costume Construction | Aidan Skye Jameson
A man visits a museum everyday to seek refuge from the bustling outside world. Rather than looking at the art within the museum, he sits at his favorite bench in front of a lifesize painting. He never truly examines all the art and inspiration around him, even though he sits in front of art for hours everyday. One day, the man grows frustrated and tired of the work he is writing and sighs. He looks up and sees the painting in front of him. He instantly grows enamored by the work and begins visiting the painting everyday to seek inspiration rather than solitude. In a moment of enlightenment, the man leaves the comfort of his bench and walks toward the painting. The painting begins to breathe and reaches out towards the man. He takes her hand and steps into the painting with her, embodying artistic inspiration.
A NEW LOOK
The sound of dripping echoes on the tin-like shingles of a roof,
Tapping softly as if to ask timidly, “May I enter?”
A set of eyes open with an exhale,
Seeping to a rich and royal hue in the piercing morning glow,
Giving haze to every sharp and rounded edge.
The eyes lay draped across a sad and tired face,
Creases from last night’s troubles remain perfectly intact,
Making a bridge between the brows and a crooked slope along the lips.
He is a man of books,
A man who uses paper and a pen.
A pen that kisses fingertips in a violent rage,
The type of kiss that leaves a mark for days.
The tapping of the rain is overpowered by the thumping of an eager clock,
Staring at the man’s sad and tired face, spitting rhythmically,
“Time to murder! To create!”
The sad and tired face accepts its fate,
Stretching to find the piles of tweed and cotton scattered about the floor,
Formulating an overwhelming question.
The piles of tweed and cotton have formed into the shape of a man,
A man of posture yet he is pestered by something.
It is as if he has been wiped of his whole known existence,
Leaving him with nothing but tired bones and shackles on the cusp of a brilliant mind.
He has yet to find the key to his own habits.
The cobblestone streets glisten like wet oyster shells,
There’s a ringing in his ear much like the distant church bells,
Humming quietly, still begging to be asked a question,
“What are you? Where are you from? And where are you going?”
There it is again,
Formulating an overwhelming question.
The window panes sweat as steam rolls its back across the glass,
A frigid chill trapped inside, waiting to be released by the stretched wooden doors.
And suddenly, the tension subsides as the cool air is sucked into the humid dripping of the oyster shells.
There is a man at the door,
The same man from before.
A man with T.S. Eliot stumbling on the edges of his brain,
Like the fog before a pulsing ache between the eyes.
He has been here before.
Footsteps echo behind the body of tweed and cotton,
Leather soles kiss the marble floor like a lover’s embrace after the war.
There’s a silent ache shared between them,
Heard with every silence.
The ache stops and reaches towards the man,
Shooting from the floor.
Human voices fade as the walls draped in gilded wood and canvas begin to whisper,
Formulating an overwhelming question.
The man sits on a nearby bench,
Molded by his bones before,
Waiting for this moment.
For the first time, the man looks up.
This is different, you see, different than before.
Before, always before, the man merely looked at the floor.
He only witnessed the slow echoing kisses of leather soles and marble white floors.
The pulsing ache between his eyes subsides,
He is onto something.
There is a painting or maybe a photograph, he cannot be sure of what he sees.
There it is again,
Formulating an overwhelming question.
It makes sense to the man unlike the other fruits trapped inside the gaudiness of gold stretched along the wall.
There is precision to it much like a well formulated phrase.
Every sharp and rounded edge can be ruled and measured,
But there is a softness to it.
The man thinks of his childhood,
His first scraped knee,
The pause before the red dots pooled together as one against him.
His mother’s hands,
Tired, worn, and creased, yet silky to touch from the cooking grease,
Stroking the cello strings of chocolate stemming from his head.
He thinks of the first flower he picked,
What color it was,
Perhaps it was Heather or a thistle.
AS J.