WaxPaperFold NFTs are original art collectables on the Wax blockchain. This is the story of how they were discovered and brought to our world.
Catching a Vision
Written by David Bright
There is this memory I have had most of my life of being a child and watching TV in my family’s living room. At the time I was three or four, and the TV show was in black and white, for what I remember is seeing a man talking to me, the audience, and beside him was a wheel of radiating black and white lines. The man and the background were the black, white, and grey of colorless TV. Not that I was aware of it all, really, I was just sitting on the floor watching the screen.
The man spun the wheel and as the lines went round and round they began to move strangely, shimmering, blurring, and then there was flashes of color going round and round, red, yellow, blue, green, round and round pulsing with a magic I even then knew was unexpected and not quite normal. What the show was I could not tell you but those few minutes have stayed with me, tugging at my mind, the sense of wonder lasting when so much else from then has faded.
It is strange really, for this moment that changed me forever was quiet and simple and unobserved by anyone but myself. In fact, I never thought to mention it to anyone or write it down until now, but while I am I can tell you of the screen door to the left of the TV that I jumped through once during a barbeque, and a grappling hook made of a coat hanger tied to a rope that I and my long lost neighborhood friends tossed onto a roof to unsuccessfully climb up.
It is amazing the wonderful memories that come to mind if you stop thinking of them as just memories but real events that shaped you, events that if not shared and felt anew might dissolve and disappear, only their caresses and scars remaining.
Another time, when I was twenty years older, I was at a friend’s house looking at his drawings done in detailed black and white. The drawings told a story and as I flipped through them the narrative drew me in and the slightly surreal style of art began to be colorized by my mind, shades of color following the curves of an arm or the curls of a woman’s hair. Once again, as with the spinning wheel on TV, I was spellbound, seeing the magic that came out of nowhere, a casual step from reality with no effort but to look.
When I told my friend I could see colors in the drawing he seemed unsurprised, thinking I was saying it needed color. He said he was hoping to find someone to color them for him. If I could paint with my mind, I would have done it right then, but I only nodded and continued flipping through the pages, letting the sense of wonder fill me and stay with me as long as it could.
Later, at home and work, I remembered how I had seen something no one else seemed to see, even though it was in plain sight. How could people just wake up and live each day ignoring what was right in front of their eyes? The world held wonders and magical doors that were beckoning to be entered but people seemed only to superficially acknowledge beauty, staring at a movie and eating their popcorn, watching a show at home on TV, because that’s what people do in the evening; sharing photos of their kids and vacations, but did anyone SEE the glory?
A few years after that I was in an art museum in San Francisco, and when I stepped out of a large room into a smaller, sunlit room, perhaps a landing at the top of a stairway, I saw a mesmerizing color pencil drawing. Whether it was mandalas or flowers I can’t quite remember but I was fascinated by the skill and patience and time that it must have taken, and in such an unforgiving medium. As I studied it, seeing the gentle beauty of the image made all the more so by the way it was created I realized the picture was moving, pulsing, flowing into itself in some way like a heart beating ever so slowly.
I shook my head and looked again, the picture began to move as before and I was stunned, not quite believing what I saw and wondering why others weren’t as awestruck as myself by this window into another world right before our eyes? Maybe I saw it more vividly, or took such a thing less for granted, because to many a two-dimensional image that gave the illusion of movement, or vice versa, was but a clever curiosity next to the shows and distractions of life, but I was not so callous and insensitive as to ignore such wonder. Whatever I saw, whatever I felt, became a constant desire to create such an image, to capture on paper or canvas or board what I saw, to catch that vision of another world right there before me, tangible and real, and step into that world, one way or another.
Of course, it was much easier thought of than done, but the seed that had been planted by that long ago spinning wheel on TV had now sprouted fully and wrapped me in itself, and was carrying me someplace I needed to go, far and high above the life I had always known. For as I gazed at that drawing in the art museum, I lost myself for a time, I was no longer aware of being there, I was traveling somewhere new and far away, the walls turned to trees and cliffs and the ceiling to endless blue skies where rocket ships and dragons careened across in screaming joy. I was on a mountain, speaking to a wise man, reaching, begging for a blessing, for a word of direction and purpose, when I felt a hand on my shoulder, and I snapped back into the museum.
“Hey, are you alright?” asked the friend I had come to the museum with. “You haven’t moved from here in like half an hour…”
I shook my head, clearing my thoughts, then replied, “Yes, I’m fine, this drawing is just really amazing!”
She leaned forward, squinting at it. “It’s odd that it is just colored pencil, but it is good.” Glancing at the info card on the wall she added, “It took this woman three years to make this!”
“Wow,” I said, “She must really have believed in her vision…”
My eyes kept being drawn to the drawing, I shook my head again. “Let’s go get some coffee at the café,” I told her, forcing myself to look away.
She visibly brightened, smiled, saying, “I would love a cappuccino right now!”
“Alright, then, let’s go…” I said, looking at her and not, not the drawing.
We turned and walked down the stairs behind us, her a step or two ahead. I realized my right hand was clenched around something and I opened it, glancing at my palm. I was holding a rock for some reason, a rough-hewn crystal, glowing blue green in the light. Where did that come from?
Part 2 Coming Soon!
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