I have always wondered about what other people think of when they gaze upon the sunset.

Over the years, I have fallen in love with many different things, my favourite book, my disintegrating elementary school, and most importantly myself.

But the one thing I have never been able to fully apprehend well enough to fall in love with is the sun, more specifically the way it delicately lifts up onto the sky, vanishing darkness, and expending light, along with the way it sways back down aimlessly at its pleasure. If you are lucky, you’ll be able to witness the five minutes of colour and beauty before darkness falls over again. Those five minutes are ethereally eternal,, something so simple yet so complicated. I have fallen in love with the suns intricate simplicity. In that moment, orange has never looked so orange, and I have never witnessed that shade of pink before; I’ve seen yellow but never in quite this way- never quite so alive. And every night, it’s a mixture of the same three colours yet every night it feels as if I am seeing beauty for the first time in my life. As if I am living for the first time in my life, living somewhere- anywhere but here. I guess that is the point of art, to make you feel something you weren’t sure you were capable of feeling before. The sun is an artist. Some people are artists, and undergo their whole life without knowing they are artists. To me, that is the saddest of all stories. They drift through life in a corrupted society with unrealistic expectations; they make sacrifices. Everyday giving away a piece of themselves- a piece that is significant to who they are, in order to fit into the corrupted society. And every night, they come home and dream in the same colours that make up the sunset. Mornings are their favourite, simply because they are in their lethargic state as the sun pierces through the blinds and kisses their eyelids out of slumber. In that split moment- they wake up into the same dream they had the night before.

Reality is a tragic thing, it forces us to pack away our dreams, perhaps in a box somewhere it can be easily found- yet it never is. It makes us pick up our unwanted affection and try shelving it back within ourselves. The truth is, our lives are split into two things, our wants and needs. If you are lucky these two categories are intertwined. I’ve never been lucky, what I want is always so far off from what I truly need. I want certain things, but never quite enough, and the things I need have a funny habit of always arriving too late. I am tied in this society’s intricate design and some days it feels as if I’ll never find my way out. I am unable to weave my dreams with reality, I guess I’ve never been able to please the angel and the devil at the same time. For the angel is not what you would expect it to be, the angel in my story is reality. It knows what is right for me and as tainted as this angel is, it knows how to survive. Something I am still learning to do. The devil is that selfish part of me, the one that wants me to choose myself, but there is some truth in this devil. She is not wrong for choosing herself. But she is wrong for thinking it can be so easily done. In my perplexing and withdrawn state, I look at the sun. I take in her colours, and I paint my own sky.

Looking at the light of this sky makes me reflect on the darkness spurring inside of me. I may not be the artist, but I most definitely am the art. Not because there is beauty within me, but more so because there is meaning and a sense of complexity traced along my bones. My words may forever stay tongue tied but my mind refuses to stay silent. I will absorb this energy- this  beauty, and it will one day radiate from me. Art is not about those who get to see it, but for those who can feel it. The emotions of the artist combined with the emotions of one’s own self. What most people do not realize is that in some way everything they do is art. The way they like their coffee in the morning, the way they write and even the way they choose to see another human being. We are composed of stardust, billions of stars have exploded to form the atoms within our body. That is art. And art can never be taken for granted. Art leaves legacy, and sometimes our legacy lives on within the sun. It lasts long after we have decayed and it inspires others to please their devils.  

Vincent Van Gogh was an artist, yet nobody ever recognized his art. He lived a lifetime of despair and could never quite get along with his devil. Even now, his struggles go unnoticed. When someone brings up Van Gogh there is murmur and praise and so much gratitude towards “Starry Night”. The world famous painting, worth over 50 million euros, his legacy. Yet, why is it that nobody talks about “The Bloody Ear”, the story about his struggles, his hardships and his sacrifices. The sun had not shined as bright for van gogh as it does for us, yet he never put his head down. Maybe he ate yellow paint because it reminded him of the sun so much, so much so that he wanted to one day be it. Little did he know, he would achieve just that. He lives on as the sun in the hearts of artists. Shedding light upon their darkest hours. “Art is to console those who have been broken by life.”  he used to say, his art now consoles the rest of the world.

My angel and my devil have never been friends, but maybe it is because they are merely the same person in scattered vessels. Maybe their atoms were more similar than different, their left hands less alike, yet the heart remains the same, except it’s split into two. Maybe that is why one cannot exist without the other.

I believe that the people who stop and stare at sunsets are as much of an artist as the sun itself.