Such beautiful words! No words can describe these beautiful words. And that is Ethan on song. A cloud illusion as Seb recalls. He doesn't know Ethan at all.
Seb first met Ethan in university. Seb was pursuing a degree in Literature. He had a burning ambition to be a creative writer. Ethan was pursuing a degree in the Fine Arts. He nursed mild ambitions to be an artist and sculptor.
Aside from their being invested in the Humanities, they are a study of contrasts. Chalk and cheese.
Seb has short light brown hair. Dark eyes, bearing nuances of Mediterranean, mystified with hints of Levantine. He sports a little arrowtail of hair at his nape of neck. This is the only outward badge hint of his artistic bent. Seb is almost pretty in a decidedly masculine way. Medium shoulders. Nearly 6 feet tall. He bears the hallmarks of a competitive sailor, even though he is a recreational one. Bronzed toned arms and legs. He runs and workouts whenever he can, to compensate for the hours of physical inactivity as a writer.
Ethan is the antithesis of Seb. Five feet eight inches to Seb's six. He is not as trim as Seb. He can lose a few pounds. Where Seb is cryptically Levantine, Ethan is in-your-face Germanic. Blindingly blond. Ashen complexion bordering on anaemic. A corpse white. Arctic pale blue eyes from a blend of ocean and sky. No genetic code to decrypt here. Clear as morning birdsong at the first break of spring. Careless mop of longish hair bunching into an irreverent ponytail. Scruffy beard. He has a tattoo somewhere on his person, of ornate quality, which he can't remember precisely where. Ethan is not handsome in the socially classic sense, but appealing in a brooding insouciant way.
Ethan has the demeanor of modest aristocracy. People who live charmed lives and say awfully clever things, although Ethan doesn't really say that very much. Manners as opposed to etiquette. And confident, blasé, outrageous manners at that, which only the privileged get away with without having to get away with. Equanimity. Ethan is apt to believe he is God if he believes in God. Ethan offers an alternative subspecies mutation of the male beast from Seb's. Both are beasts with brains. Although Ethan embodies that extra masculine bit of devilish monstrosity in his mien. This profile appeals to women who are longing for something more, but don't know it.
Seb is the curious, effervescent, communicative humanist. He is in his element in a sea of words. He is convinced that Art follows Life.
Ethan is intense, ponderous, often brooding. He recasts the world on canvas and rock as only he sees it. He makes the whole annoyingly incomplete. He has the weakness, or maybe this is a strength for an artist, to portray life as larger than life. Art leads the way. Art challenges, mocks and revalues Life. Life necessarily follows Art. If not, why have Art? An arrogant dick who does not suffer art fools gladly. If he suffers them at all. An art fascist, if this well-meaning label doesn't demean fascism.
Being a creative animal, he is necessarily a romantic, but he is not particularly invested in romance.
Socioeconomically, Seb is new money minted upper middle class, still wondrously figuring out the possibilities of money. It affords him a platform to pursue creativity without the overhang of economic pressure. But, his craft has to deliver at some point to feed economic reality.
Ethan coasts along on an income stream legacy. A life annuity. Old money modest aristocracy. Annoyances like mortgages are not in his financial lexicon. He can follow his artistic impulses to his heart's highest calling without the inconvenient distraction of economic imperatives.
Seb is single. He has no desire to settle down in the foreseeable future. He spends time between verdant Hampstead Heath in outer London, and Penzance at the jackboot tip of Cornwall. He relishes the romance of sailing in its struggle against the laws of nature. He fashions himself as a kind of modern day ethical pirate of Penzance. He lives a writer's hermit life someplace in the far countryside whenever he is working on a novel. He has published with moderate success. At this time, he is in between novels, seeking inspiration for his elusive magnum opus. Maybe Ethan will be the fountainhead?
Psychologists are still unsure as to whether human beings think in words and sentences, or images and concepts. Seb lives by words and sentences. Ethan, images. Seb and Ethan are indeed chalk and cheese. But together, they got the world covered.
Ethan lives alone in a remote cliffside cottage, in his neck of the woods which cranes soaringly above a cove, in the south coast. A sort of wuthering heights staring down on a moor of sea. This is the cove that Seb is sailing to.
Ethan's cottage is in the quintessential classic English style. Its interior has the cosy cottage ambience, paneled with prematurely aged wood, but updated tastefully with modern amenities while retaining the rustic charm. The cottage comprises a living room, which spills out seamlessly to a patio, a garden extending all the way to the cliff edge, overlooking the sea. There is an open kitchenette, a dining area, three bedrooms, and a studio where Ethan does his drawing, sculpting and photoshoots. The nearest home from the cottage is a mile away. A world unto itself, which is Ethan's world of all possible worlds.
Ethan has a bevy of girlfriends, but remains single. They see in him a wild man with possibly a homemade bomb in his pocket, an irresistible heroism, although of what, they cannot define. His independent eccentric artistic streak is at odds with the institution of marriage. His solitude lifestyle does not appeal to his girlfriends. They are initially enamoured of the austere romance of the Emily Brontësque isolation, but after a week or two of quietude, and being sufficiently awed by the beauty of the environs, they ache for more animated stimulation.
Seb drops his sail. He motors gently into the cove. Chug, chug, chug. He moors his yacht at the ramshackle jetty. His yacht is in a static gallop. Will the jetty hold his yacht in a tempest, he wonders?
The sailor home from the sea.
A generously sunny day. Seb puts on his aviator sunshades. His spirit soars. This is a good day to be alive.
His eyes travel up the massive erection of cliff face. This he must mount.
He lugs his sausage of baggage up the dizzy winding hewn cliff path to Ethan's cottage. He feels invigorated. The air is so sharp, he can kiss it.
And there he is. Ethan. Perched precariously at the cliff edge overhang of his garden, staring down the far horizon, forehead wrinkled, eyes squinted sagely, hand gripping his paint brush with a vengeance, attacking his canvas with a practised quality.
***
Chapter 2: The Commission
Seb and Ethan reconnect over the week.
They were both nineteen when they first met in uni. They were best friends then at a time when those words meant something. They are now a ripe thirty-five.
They fall into an idyllic routine. Seb is in between novels. Ethan is in between work commissions. It is summer. Ethan doesn't say much. They have a cosmic connection that transcends perfunctory words. They occasionally talk about things past that are too memorable to remember, but these drift back to them now.
They eke out a bohemian existence that is mercifully spared of the romance of deprivation and hunger.
There is a system to their idyll. Everyday is a new eternity. Their time and place is theirs to plot.
They are both night people. They muse, philosophise, wine and weed deep into the night. On indulgent nights when they set themselves adrift, and are particularly buoyant and jolly, Ethan breaks into mountain songs, and Seb, salty sea shanties of lyrical beauty.
They rise at the whip crack of high noon. A ploughman's brunch.
They ride Ethan's Harley, meandering the giddy corniche, negotiating the hairpins, to the village three miles away for their espresso fix. On days when the weather is under the weather, they make do with the Bentley.
The village hosts a minor tourist attraction which Ethan has yet to figure out what the fuss is all about. An artistic figure created his greatest work there during his productive 'blue' period. His lover, a woman old enough to be his mother, visited often enough to tease forth his inspiration juices.
There is a simple minimal tomb of the artist in the village. The artist passed on before his muse. Legend has it that he willed that his body be buried in two parts, one at the village where he took up spiritual abode, and the other together with his muse's body at her birth place when she herself eventually passes on. The logistics of executing this curious death wish fueled interesting conjecture as to the method and the process of just how his body was split asunder. Macabre. But charming.
There is some speculation about who the woman might be. But, that is yet another fireside story for a dark and stormy night.
Seb reckons this makes intriguing, tantalising grist for the literary mill, with the potential to spinoff a movie. His sixth sense tells him that he should trust his five senses on this. He takes a mental note of researching into this opportunity.
