Almighty painter

Chapter 574: Exhibition Paintings (Part )
"Gu Weijing, thank you for coming upstairs today--" Koko said.

——Thank you for saying you like me at the table.

Although I know.

You just want me to look good in front of my parents.

Koko watched Gu Weijing get into the car. She smiled and stood there: "Let's leave the conversation upstairs upstairs. As for today's matter, I will go to talk to Sakai Katsuko myself. You don't have to worry. Good night."

When she truly blooms again, she will never be a pitiful and weak woman who needs charity from others.

I like you very much.

I really like you.

Maybe I'm in love with you.

Do you love me too? That would be great.

Don't you love me? Then go ahead and love the one you want to love.

People can only fall in love with someone because of being moved and liking him/her, and will not fall in love with someone because of pity, although the two situations are very close and sometimes difficult to distinguish.

But Koko knew it very well.

Gu Weijing's feelings towards her included pity, sympathy, care, and of course... some liking for her as well.

But that's not love yet.

He prefers Miss Sakai.

Koko has always been very smart. She has also always been very proud and strong.

If you want to give me some of your heart out of pity, I don't want any of it.

Feelings are not an exchange of interests on the scale. Koko has never been the kind of person who wants to get something in return just because she loves someone.

I feel sorry for myself and for a good girl like Ms. Sakai.

What I want is that one day you will look me in the eye and say that you love me.

The car starts.

Gu Weijing tilted his head and looked out the car window quietly. The girl standing in front of the corridor was gradually disappearing into the night.

His breath hit the window.

The water mist is hazy.

The round smiling face smiling at him appeared on the glass again.

"Mr. Gu, shall we go home?"

Uncle Alai, who was driving, asked.

"No, just turn around and go to the Good Luck Orphanage, then you can go and rest. Don't worry about it anymore. It's really troublesome tonight."

Gu Weijing said softly.

He lowered his head and sent a text message to Gu Tongxiang, telling his grandfather that he wanted to go out to collect folk songs tonight, right in Miss Shengzi's small studio at the Good Luck Orphanage. He would not be going back at night, so don't worry.

but.

Judging from the number of glasses of imported red wine that my grandfather drank at the welcome banquet today.

The other party saw the message.

It must have been Sunday morning.

"When you pick up the brush, you must believe from the bottom of your heart that this is it, this painting, what is in front of me is the ultimate work for the Singapore Art Exhibition. Believe from the bottom of your heart that in a few hours, I will put down the brush, take a picture of it and send it to the organizing committee's email address. It is no longer important whether I win the award or not. What matters is that I can record my current mood and my emotions completely." Miss Sakai's voice sounded in my mind again.

"Then, Shengzi...it's now." Gu Weijing answered in his heart.
-
Gu Weijing turned on the light in the small studio, and the clock on the wall showed five minutes to two in the morning.

This is the time when the twilight is deepest and the loneliest.

He put his schoolbag in the corner, hesitated for a moment between the coffee beans and tea leaves placed on the window sill with floating flowers, and finally chose to take out a bag of black tea.

He took two bottles of mineral water and poured them into the kettle, then placed it on the base to heat it.

Then he walked to the window alone.

Open the curtains and look at the moon outside the window.

It is probably difficult to find a city in the world as unique as Yangon with its contradictory temperament.

So busy and so slow.

According to some data, the population of Yangon Province is roughly the same as that of New York City, but the city's electricity consumption is less than one-tenth of the former, and the annual per capita electricity consumption is only one-fifteenth of the former.

During the day.

You can see how millions of people live in this city, with the hustle and bustle of traffic and people coming and going.

But the sun had just set.

The whole city became small and quiet in an instant.

There are no skyscrapers with brightly lit facades, no giant multimedia digital billboards, nothing.

So, when the whole world falls asleep.

Silent night.

The moonlight will appear exceptionally bright.

As real as white gauze.

Gu Weijing likes the night.

People say that night belongs to artists. He doesn't know whether it is true or not. He just likes the feeling when looking at the moon.

It is probably difficult to find a romantic image in the world with such a contradictory temperament as the moon.

Passionate moonlight, quiet moonlight, cold moonlight, reunion moonlight, holy moonlight...

Goddess, werewolf, criminal, wise man...

Countless people have imposed countless different symbols and images on this satellite that has illuminated the Earth for 45 billion years. They are entangled with each other, contradictory to each other, and yet perfectly integrated with each other.

Whenever Gu Weijing looked at the moon, his heart would always move slightly.

Or.

Whenever Gu Weijing's heart moved slightly, he always wanted to look at the moon.

When he came back from the botanical garden, he looked at the moon for a long time.

At that time.

He then remembered that more than a century ago, Ms. Carroll, who painted "Old Church in a Thunderstorm", also walked past the street in front of her door under similar moonlight.

Gu Weijing thought of her, thought of the misfortune of a painter's life, and thought about what is truly important in a person's life.

If you are not sure about the future, if even if you do well enough, you cannot reach the highest level of success, do you still have the courage to pick up the paintbrush?
That day he understood what motivated him to pick up the brush and paint.

So, he painted a great picture of Wisteria.

And today.

He recalled what had happened and what he had experienced.

Koko, her parents, the twinkling lights in the market, the people working day and night in the market, the old men setting up night stalls and playing poker, and the tired workers.

The nightclub street with bright lights and wine, the depressed and confused Miao Angwen, the fierce but fearful Wu Qinlai and the unpredictable Hao Ge.

Of course, there was also the old man who pretended to be a tough guy, but cried tears of joy at the banquet that De Chang wished for.

And Uncle Alai, a tough guy who looks very weathered but is actually very delicate at heart.

One by one, one by one, it was as if they were projected into my mind by the moonlight, flashing before my eyes one by one like a revolving lantern.

"Woo——"

The heating lamp went out and the kettle began to hum softly.

Gu Weijing walked over, turned off the power, and took out the teacup.

He added a handful of tea leaves, tilted the kettle, and watched the dark green tea stems rise and fall in the cup.

The green tea leaves are tangled together under the water, like a tangled mass of water plants.

Gu Weijing took the teacup back to the window, looked at the moonlight, and drank the hot tea in small sips.

He had just drunk a lot of soup at Koko's house, so he was not thirsty.

Gu Weijing just subconsciously felt that when you are thinking about artistic creation in the moonlight, you always have to drink something in your mouth to be in line with the situation.

People like Li Bai, Beethoven and Van Gogh all like to drink.

Alcohol can calm the mind and provide anesthesia.

Beethoven drank wine every night, while Van Gogh regarded absinthe as the "source of Muse" in his life. He would drink from it in large gulps while splashing ink in front of the easel, venting his depression until he fell into a deep sleep.

Balzac did not like wine.

He believes that drinking alcohol makes him fall asleep easily, and he should drink a lot of coffee when creating, as coffee can refresh him.

Balzac wrote in his diary that the coffee he drank in his lifetime could "fill the entire Seine. It is not good for health, but... it is a necessary part of my creation."

The great writer hangs out in various high-class salons during the day, studying how to hook up with rich ladies and widows. At night, he writes furiously in his apartment, trying to finish his manuscript before the publisher and creditors come to his door and beat him up.

He drank coffee, and in the dark and cold night, he wrote on a blank space on a piece of paper his grand ambition: "One day, a man like Honore (Balzac's name) will marry a rich widow!" to constantly encourage himself.

(Note: Balzac, because he drank too much black coffee, he had suffered from serious stomach problems and high blood pressure for a long time.)
Then he took the royalties from the publishing house, asked a tailor to make him the most fashionable outfit in Paris, and continued to go out and focus on dating rich women.

Sometimes it's the other way around.

I worked on my manuscripts during the day and chatted with the lady until the early hours of the morning.

Balzac not only wrote himself as the "Father of Modern French Novels", but also won over women including but not limited to his 45-year-old neighbor, Madame Berni, the 41-year-old Duchess of Ablandet, the widow of a general under Napoleon, and Madame de Hanska, a noblewoman from Ukraine...

Behind this night owl-like vigorous double-life energy, the black coffee that is enough to fill the Seine plays an indispensable role.

When Gu Weijing is thinking, he doesn't drink alcohol or coffee often.

He likes drinking tea.

It is probably difficult to find a drink in the world that has such a contradictory temperament as tea.

It contains both the characteristics of wine and the connotation of coffee. It is rich in amino acids and contains a large amount of tea polyphenols.

Amino acids can calm the mind and help you sleep.

Tea polyphenols can keep people excited and resist sleepiness.

Gu Weijing gently drank the hot drink in the cup, feeling the slight bitterness, the slight sweetness, and the delicate balance between taste buds and nerve endings.

This world is so contradictory.

he thought.

Mr. Gu's expectation that he would be selected by the National Artists Association was real. His tears after he was selected were also real.

Miao Angwen’s cruelty is real, and his helplessness and pain are also real.

Koko's strength is real, and her fragility is also real.

The cowardly cry of Officer Dan heard at the door was real. He stood in front of herself, holding a wine glass, and said to herself with red eyes that he could sell anything in his life, nothing mattered, even selling blood and his life, but he would not sell his daughter. His love for Koko was also extremely real.

Even Brother Hao.

If he hadn't received the phone call today, Gu Weijing would never have imagined that such a person would actually be there trying to explain to him that he was not a real bad guy with blood on his hands.

This big boss who could be described as "full of evil" actually wanted to find psychological comfort from me, a high school student?
this kind of thing.

If I tell it to others, who will believe it?

Including himself, he had made up his mind to cut off his feelings with Koko and ignore her sadness. But when she cried in his arms, he also went against reason.

The strong will become weak, the weak will become strong, the rich will not be able to obtain what they want, and the poor will also have small joys.

Good people will cry, and bad people will not dare to face themselves.

Everyone has two sides in their heart.

People can hurt each other because of a careless word, or they can become extremely strong because of a simple hug or a shabby little bracelet.

Just one day.

However, Gu Weijing felt that the world before his eyes had become different.

The difference between listening to the same opera composed with great effort through the few-dollar headphones given as a gift in economy class on a cheap airplane and listening to it in person in the Golden Hall of Vienna.

It becomes delicate and rich.

Originally there were only loud, not loud, like, dislike, love, don’t love, strong, not strong, happy, unhappy... the difference between these straight-line “1” and “0” was added with a decimal point in the middle that can extend infinitely.

A shadow appeared in the rigid divide between yin and yang.

There is darkness in light, and there is light in darkness.

then.

The world began to flow like a yin-yang fish. There were dynamic changes in the voices, echoes between male and female voices, vibrato on the violin, sustain on the piano, tonguing on the clarinet... They began to separate from a sticky mass of "sounds" and developed their own unique characteristics.

Gu Weijing opened the window to let the evening breeze blow in.

Ever since the big factories in the Layada district began operating, Miss Sakai no longer allows the windows in the house to be opened often.

The air purifier in the studio is also on 24 hours a day, day and night.

Gu Weijing, however, completely immersed himself in the night breeze of Yangon.

Maybe one day.

Severe air pollution will destroy the air here, just as Shengzi worried, and make the moonlight in the city hazy.

Fortunately now.

The moonlight at night was still bright, and there was only a faint smell in the air, like the faint smell of firecrackers being blown away.

This is the smell of sulfur emanating from the large chimney of the steel rolling heating furnace, which is one of the few times that work does not stop at night.

He stood in the moonlight, sipping his tea, listening to the sounds made by the entire city as it fell asleep.

In the silence of all things, there are still hundreds of different styles.

perhaps.

What he thought about, heard, saw, and tasted now was the real hustle and bustle of the world.

Whether it is the moon or tea, they are all symbols of human emotions.

Gu Weijing felt.

It is probably difficult to find such subtle emotions in his paintings as those exhibited in the Singapore Biennale today.

Not intense.

Don't be depressed.

Just right.

(End of this chapter)