An Infinite Song

As a small youth the Artist could gaze upon the unadulterated expanse of the Universe for miles in all directions, the verdant landscape of mango, coconut, ackee and rubber trees, and trees that bore a multitude of fruits and flowers, before the mountains cascaded into the city, the city into the ocean. After some years, the house built by his grandparents became surrounded by squatter communities, drawn to the area by the freshwater river. Every Saturday the women would wash their clothes in the river, beautifully, rhythmically, as if bonded to an invisible pulse, and they bathed themselves and their children there. The image of them smiling, glistening in the sun was framed in the Artist's mind as the purest form of beauty. The community was relatively peaceful, but jubilant music, reggae, dub and dancehall, and the sound of gunshots would reverberate through the mountains at almost equal measure.

The Artist went to school, but he spent much of his day drawing portraits of the children around him. He was not supposed to be drawing, and if he got caught the Teacher would beat him. The Artist would imagine his friend Kamal, who did not go to school, running the streets and washing car windows, or selling bag juice, and the Artist would long to be with him. He imagined that Kamal was Free.

The Artist could see Lights that other people could not see. The Lights informed his art with their colours and depth of perception, and brought an ethereal quality to his work. As he practised focusing on the Lights he could see that they were Beings, deities and ancestors, the indigenous spirits of the land. He knew better than to speak of them, but he painted them as he had begun to see them, their luminous bodies as vivid and as real as the humans in pulsating flesh. The Artist could see lights and shadows in human energy fields too, as though he were solely aware of another dimension bleeding into his own.

As they entered into adolescence, Kamal began selling The Artist's drawings on the streets, mainly through car windows, and they would split the profits 50/50. The Artist did not like to speak much, unless something was important or funny, but his best friend had a fast, wide smile, a contagious charm, fast wit, hyperactivity, and a way with words which made him an excellent salesman. The Artist lived alone with his Mother, who worked as a Maid in a hotel in the city, and his small extra income was a blessing to them. After a while he was able to buy better materials, and taught himself to paint in oils and different mediums.

The Artist attended church with his mother on Sundays. He would close his eyes listening to the Preacher talk, watching the worlds the Preacher created arise and collapse like bubbles with the undulation of his speech, the fervour in his voice, and the belief of the crowd. One day as the Preacher was speaking, the Artist closed his eyes and saw Christ. Christ’s eyes penetrated the Artist’s so intensely that he awoke startled, with a deep sense of being Known, to his Mother about to slap him awake. His Mother was a being whose body seemed to generate the warmth of the sun, but Church was to be taken seriously. He left the church wanting to paint Christ in his True form. He also wanted to paint the saints and angels in hues that were geographically accurate and also familiar to his people, so they did not worship a foreign God, a God that was separate from them.

So the Artist began to paint the churches with his visions of and interpretations of biblical scenes, pieces which drew crowds. Word of the Artist had already spread, and he was commissioned for portraits, record covers, and murals in business districts. He began attending the art university with the money that he saved as his visions were flooding the city. He painted murals in the ghettos, illuminating them with paintings of mythical beings, gods and goddesses, and creatures of all kinds, intermingling with the realism of his surroundings, his culture and ancestral memories. He left small works on buses and random places for people to find, gifts to the Universe, so that his people could see refractions of their own beauty.

One day, the Artist’s Mother came back from work and told him that the hotel’s manager had seen his work, and was offering a space to exhibit in the hotel. The Artist lovingly curated his best works, and paid Kamal to help him set up. Many people, including foreigners, viewed the exhibition and bought pieces. A man named Antonio, from Italy, contacted him to say he was interested in exhibiting the artist’s work in his gallery in Milan, and possibly other places throughout Europe over the summer.

The Musician sang and played the cello and violin, but she had recently met some kora players in Camden town. The kora could transcend dimensions. It could bring heaven on to earth. She was a student of music and philosophy, and recently began to work at nights as a Prostitute to help with her rent costs.

The Musician was beautiful in a way that could make a man believe in God. She was beautiful in a way that made men forget their Gods. She could bring in a lot of money over the course of the night. The place where she worked was clean, and she worried more for her spiritual hygiene than her physical. The Pimp, Guiseppe, made more money from selling cocaine than women, cocaine that had been grown by enslaved indigenous people in the Amazon, and smuggled through cities of her origins, causing warfare and gun violence. So far the work had been okay, but men would leave her bed and their torments and energies would stay behind, to be transmuted by her own Being and alchemized into Music.

The Musician was usually a blissful person, with an ability to escape from any uncomfortable situation into the paradise of her own mind. She seemed to exist in a perpetual romance with the Universe. Lying on her back, she dreamed of escaping the city, she dreamed of entering caves behind waterfalls, in places filled with the songs of thousands of birds.

“Butterfly wings cannot fly against physics” she thought, as the man on top of her struck her face.

“Look at me when I’m fucking you, bitch!” Her eyes shone golden as they met his, lit with an eternal flame. She shoved him off of her body and in his drunken state he landed on the floor, unable to keep his balance. The Pimp heard the fall from where he waited outside in the corridor, entered into the room and escorted the client out, and the Musician left to go find her friends she would jam with, her soul expanding into the Night.

The Artist was on the London underground train. He had bought a little black Moleskine book to sketch in on his way back from Milan. He was drawing a Messiah, but the train was shaking, and he accidentally poked a hole between the Messiah’s eyes, turning the image into one of suffering instead of strength. His DNA was unravelling through Time, stretching from pyramids behind him. The sketch was rough for the Artist, who had achieved a hyperrealism in his work that made people reach out to touch the beads of sweat on his subjects. The train doors opened and the train's recorded voice instructed passengers to Please Mind the Gap.

The Artist looked up instinctively as the Musician boarded the train. Her eyes and skin and colossal hair were all golden, and she appeared luminescent as one of the deities he painted. Her eyes fixed upon his, his lucid expression, his tight dreadlocks and ethereal beauty, and they entered a space that was suspended beyond Time. The two Immortal souls stared at each other in their Divinity, their complete rawness and potent Light. The force of the Love that was created between them extended into an Infinite Song.

It was rare for the Artist to begin a conversation, but he asked her name.

“Amora”

“Kweli”.

The two spoke gently to each other as if they were old friends, both of them fully immersed in the presence of the other. They spoke about Jamaica, where he would be returning tomorrow, she told him how her paternal grandparents were also Jamaican but she had never visited, and he showed her the drawings in his little black book. She spoke to him about the album she was recording with her friends. They spoke of a multitude of things. She invited him to go with her to the jam session, but he declined. Although every cell in his body was commanding him to stay with her, his flight was early in the morning. As he got off the train he smiled and said, “Come find me in Kingston!”

He had left his little black book on the seat, but as Amora opened her mouth to speak, the train’s door closed, the Artist’s iridescent blue outline had disappeared into the Night.

That night she dreamt she was in a deep valley with the Artist who was holding her hand. Whales flew above them in the sky, and Amora could feel their presence, their hugeness, as though they were real.

“This valley used to be an Ocean”, the Artist said to her, feeling the need to explain the presence of the whales.

The exhibition had been successful, and Kweli landed in Kingston feeling exuberant, with enough money to put a deposit on a house for his mother. As he travelled up to the mountains he decided to stop in the city to buy food from one of his favorite places. He had a strange feeling but in this moment allowed his belly to govern. Police had been instructed by foreign agents to find a don man at all costs, and as Kweli crossed the road to the food seller, gunmen rushed out into the road to shoot at a police car on the opposite side. The police returned fire, and Kweli heard what sounded like the sky splitting open, and then found himself risen above the city, with angels and ancestors all around him, even more brilliantly and clearly than he had seen before. He thought of his mother waiting for him to come home, and the next thought that flashed through his mind surprised him.

“Amora”, he said, and he felt a force stronger than nature pull him back towards his body.

Amora had brought the little black book with her to work, and was looking at it as she waited for a client. Guiseppe stood over her, recognising the work of the Artist. His brother, who laundered Guiseppe’s money, had just held an exhibition in Italy showcasing his work. He found an empty room and called his brother, who instructed him to offer the girl £20,000 for the book. They had brought in more over the weekend, so it was no problem to find the cash.

“Don’t tell the girl, but the Artist has been shot, he could be dead within hours. His work will be worth much more soon”.

Guiseppe made the offer to Amora. She was surprised to learn the value of the Artist’s work, as he had seemed so humble. Amora hoped that Kweli would forgive her. She ripped out her favorite page, the drawing from the train, the Messiah, before handing the book to Guiseppe. Guiseppe’s faced twitched but he gave her the bag of money. As Amora left she felt a Light filling her spirit, a clarity as her path extended before her. In her heart was the Infinite Song, and her knowledge shewould take the next flight to Kingston and find the Artist, and explore the land of her ancestors. As she thought this a butterfly flew past, and she entered into the expanse.