The Architecture of the Empty

"In a world increasingly obsessed with 'hollow thinking' where people are reduced to units and human dignity is phased out of the budget the act of creation becomes a form of resistance. This piece was born from a week of rigid rules and 'authoritarian bull shit,' but it ends in the only place the parasites cannot reach: the sanctuary of the imagination.

As a seventy-six-year-old artist and musician, my intellect tells me I am not alone in this struggle. Whether we are squinting our eyes at micromanagers or curling our lips at soul-drainers, we are the keepers of the voltage. Here is a look at the war for the soul of our era, fought one vibrantly decorated wall at a time."

The Architecture of the Empty

The Hollow Souls of the Broken Rhythm

It began as a quiet thinning of the blood. The world did not end with a bang; it ended with the sound of a hole puncher. They are everywhere now, the Architects of the Hollow. You see them in the lobbies of apartment complexes, behind the desks of glass-walled offices, and patrolling the digital borders of the everyday. They move with a strange, rehearsed stiffening of the spine, a posture adopted by those who have traded their marrow for a manual of SOPs.

To the Hollow, empathy is a technical error. They do not see neighbors, artists, or elders; they see "units" and "risk factors." They harbor grudges like precious stones, polishing them in the dark until they can be used to shatter someone’s peace over a missing form or a stray hair. It is the ultimate power play: the person who feels nothing versus the person who feels everything.

They have normalized the absurd. They walk through the halls as if they have the very air, treating human dignity as a luxury that has been phased out of the budget. They thrive on the "three-day notice" and the "denied request," finding a parasitic vitality in the act of minimizing others. They believe that by making you small, they become giants. But their world is a desert of linoleum. They possess the keys, but they have forgotten why doors exist. They are the sovereigns of the empty, ruling over a kingdom of silence and hollow thinking, never realizing that while they can enforce the rules, they can never capture the light.

The Feeders of the Void

They are the parasites of the mundane, organisms that thrive only in the friction they create. A hollow person cannot glow on their own, so they must dim the lights of everyone else to feel bright. They hover over the lives of others, looking for the smallest cracked forgotten word, a misplaced signature, a moment of human heart to latch onto.

Their fuel is the "humiliation." They do not just want compliance; they want to witness the moment a person’s spirit wilts under the weight of an arbitrary rule. They drink at the sight of someone standing outside a closed door, waiting for permission to exist. In that silence, they feel a borrowed heartbeat. They walk in the hallways with heavy, unearned gravity, masquerading their insecurity as authority. They mistake the ability to "forbid" for the ability to "lead." But like all parasites, they are fragile. They depend entirely on the system they uphold; take away the clipboard and the title, and there is nothing left but a vacuum.

To deny them “feed" is the only way to starve them. When you meet their authoritarian demands with a cold, hollow shell of your own, a letter with no pulse, a voice with no tremor, they find nothing to latch onto. You turn into a surface their hooks cannot grip. Alone in their sterile hallways, they reign over a realm filled only with the echoes of their hollow hearts.

The Hollow One entered the room with a clipboard held like a shield. They did not look at the walls; they scanned them for "unauthorized attachments." They did not smell the air; they calculated the "occupancy load." They moved with the jerky, efficient rhythm of a machine that had been taught to walk but never taught to dance. Then, the music started. It was not the polite, elevator hum they were used to. It was a deep, baritone vibration, a low, bluesy growl that seemed to come from the floorboards themselves. It was thick with history, salt, and soul. The sound’s frequency was charged with emotion, making it impossible to easily classify or forget.

The Hollow One stopped. The mechanical hum of their internal clockwork seemed to hitch. They looked toward the speaker, and for a split second, the vacuum behind their eyes flickered. They tried to categorize it. They looked for a decibel limit to cite. They looked for a permit for "expressive activity." But the music did not care about permits. It bypassed the Hollow One's ears and went straight for the space where their heart used to be, searching for a resonance that was not there. The Hollow One felt a phantom itch of irritation the parasite’s hunger. They could not devalue the song because they could not grasp it. You cannot evict a melody. You cannot put a "three-day notice" on a vibration. Frustrated by the inability to minimize the moment, the Hollow One turned and retreated into the hallway, their shoes clicking a frantic, hollow beat against the linoleum. They hurried back to the safety of their paperwork, desperate to find a world where everything stayed small, quiet, and dead.

The Exile’s Armor

They cast us out because we are the mirrors they cannot stand to investigate. To the Authoritarian, the Empath is a dangerous frequency a broadcast of humanity that threatens to shatter the fragile glass of their "system." They see our color as a stain and our laughter as a riot. Manipulation requires a victim who believes they are small. But an artist knows they are vast. When they try to devalue us, they are trying to rewrite our blueprints, attempting to replace our constellations with their own cramped sketches. They use “exile" as a weapon, not realizing that when they push us to the margins, they are simply placing us in the only space where the light is not blocked by their walls.

So, we build the Shield. It is a shield forged from the very things they fear: the "hollow" letter that gives them nothing to chew on, the silence that refuses to beg, and the art that continues to scream in Technicolor while they live in shades of gray. We become "unmanageable" not because we break the rules, but because we are too large to fit inside them. They walk through the halls thinking they have cleared the room of "trouble." They do not realize they have simply turned our homes into sanctuaries and our silence into a fortress. Every time they try to destroy a spirit, they only succeed in making the Artist’s vision sharper. They are the shadows; we are the source.

The Sanctuary of the Unseen

Behind the door marked with a standard brass number a number the Hollow One thinks defines space lies a defiance of physics. While the hallway outside is a vacuum of beige and fluorescent hum, this room breathes in Technicolor. The walls are not merely boundaries; they are canvases, layered with the artifacts of a thousand journeys. Here, time does not move in minutes or rent cycles; it moves in the swirl of a bohemian tapestry and the deep, rich indigo of a velvet shadow. The Authoritarian stands on the threshold, their eyes sliding over the "clutter," unable to perceive the "composition." They see a rug; the Artist sees a landscape. They see a decoration; the Artist sees a frequency. This is a room shaped from soul itself, with each item holding the essence of an unwritten song. To the Hollow, it is a mess to be managed. To the Living, it is a map of the Infinite.

"The Hollow One stands at the threshold, and all they see is 'unauthorized décor' and 'clutter.' They cannot see that the tiny room is actually a portal. They see the iron bars of the birdcage, but they miss the blue wings within it a living frequency that survives on something more than just water and seed. Behind the Authoritarian, the hallway is a vacuum. But inside, the walls are covered in the artifacts of a traveler. There is a Tree of Life stretching its rainbow branches toward the sun they try to block with blinds. There are faces of legends on the walls, singers of the deep baritone truth that the Hollow People have forgotten. To the manager, this is a mess to be managed; to the Artist, it is a fortress of memories, textures, and defiance. They can threaten the 'unit,' but they can never touch the kaleidoscope spinning inside it."

The Engine of Resistance

"In the center of the kaleidoscope sits the engine. Bathed in the bright light from the laptop screen, the Artist transforms the empty ideas of society into meaningful, genuine expressions on a digital anvil. Above the screen, the guardians watch from the wall. John and Yoko declare that the war is over, a silent prayer for peace in a complex built on conflict. Beside them, the posters proclaim the truth the manager cannot see that beneath the 'low income' label is the soul of a gypsy, a heart of a hippie, and the spirit of a fairy. The Authoritarian wants a desk cleared of 'clutter,' but the Artist knows these are not just objects they are the ingredients of a spell. The beads, the wolves, and the 'Stay Wild' reminders are the spiritual barbed wire that keeps the hollow people from entering the mind. They can walk through the door, but they can never cross the threshold of the imagination."

The Lighthouse for the Cast-Out

"This room is not just a sanctuary; it is a lighthouse. While the world outside succumbs to the grey fog of authoritarian rule, these walls pulse with the frequency of a lived-in soul. The Hollow People walk through the halls of the complex, eyes fixed on the linoleum, terrified of anything they cannot measure. They see a woman of seventy-six and think they see a target for their petty power plays. They see a 'unit' to be managed. But their first mistake, the fatal error of the hollow is assuming they are dealing with someone who can be diminished.

They do not see the California bear guarding the door, or the soldier’s eyes watching from the frame, reminding the Artist that resilience is in the blood. They do not hear the deep baritone of a voice that has lived through decades of rock and blues. Across the era, in a thousand tiny rooms, others are doing the same: squinting their eyes at the micromanagers, curling their lips at the soul-drainers, and refusing to be wiped away like a smudge on a mirror.

The light in the room shifts, catching the rainbow branches of the Tree of Life, and for a moment, the tiny space expands until it is wider than the world. She picks up her pen, breathes out the last of their grey energy, and records a truth that will still be singing long after the Hollow People have crumbled into the dust, they were so desperate to manage."

written, created, edited by

Vicki Lawana Trusselli

Trusselli Art

Outstages Cafe Art Studio Production

California

copyright 2026