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ArtistA dynamic theatrical scene of teenager boy and a girl playing hide and seek game in a folders of a huge theatrical curtains with colorful bizarre medieval embroidery consisting of birds, butterflies, flowers and other strange creatures in Oriental style. While the boy on the left is looking in our direction from one opening between folders, the girl on the right in another opening between folders of the curtains is looking away from us, looking for a boy. So they can't see each other, while we perfectly see them both. The mood is playful, but a little bizarre and psychedelic like a fairytale.
The old picture had become a regular at the back table, ordering the same drink every year. Every time a new painter wandered into town with shinier brushes and brighter promises, I’d ask them to paint it again. Most of them came back with something that looked like a confession made after closing time. Some came back with jokes. Every now and then one walked in carrying a stranger wearing my old friend’s coat.
This one wasn’t the picture I’d been chasing.
But it knew my name.
The curtain was stitched from the dreams of birds that forgot how to migrate. Butterflies drifted through embroidered flowers like rumors escaping a monastery. Little castles leaned sideways, as though they’d spent too many nights listening to carnival music.
A boy hid in one fold, staring straight at us. Not frightened. Just waiting for somebody else to admit we were watching.
Across the stage a girl searched the wrong direction, certain the universe was hiding just one curtain farther along. They were only a few feet apart, but fairy tales measure distance differently. Sometimes it’s counted in years. Sometimes in the lies you tell yourself while the orchestra tunes up.
We could see them both.
That’s the curse of the audience.
You always know where the lost people are.
You just can’t tell them.
The embroidered birds never stopped singing, although none of them had mouths. Suns with sleepy eyes hung in the velvet like old theater lights that refused retirement. Somewhere backstage a butterfly coughed glitter into the dust, and every speck became another memory pretending to be prophecy.
Maybe that’s what these machines are doing now.
Not copying.
Remembering sideways.
Every new model opens another curtain, hoping the old room is still there. Usually it isn’t. Usually there’s a janitor sweeping up yesterday’s miracles. But once in a while the stagehands forget to strike the set, and something impossible survives the rewrite.
Not the picture you wanted.
The picture that wanted you.
So you tip your hat to the accident, buy it another drink, and let it tell the story it has been rehearsing all these years while everyone else insisted on performing a different play. Somewhere behind those impossible curtains, the boy is still looking toward us. The girl is still searching. And the birds keep embroidering the silence together, one impossible feather at a time.
