Prologue.
“Its life 101, darling.” I remember them, little voices inside my head, tiny little creatures rolling their eyes incredulously at me, calling out the shots, telling me.”The way you go after things, the way you feel and the way you do the things you do, the things you passionately so, crave and want and relentlessly lust, the things you secretly wish upon a star for, night after night, a star crowded sky after another, all these little things and then some more, the way you name those is eventually what you name your soul after.”
-
“Oh wow.” I see them staring. I say nothing, waiting. “How do you even call that thing?” people now, stating back at me. “It sounds weird. It sounds unknown. It sounds off.” And so the story goes like this, once again, once more. “It is called HLAOTVEE. As in hate, as in love.” They are stunned. “Why? Isn’t this supposedly so, an ongoing fashion meets art something?” they ask, curious now. “The question shouldn’t be why, but who.” I tease them, them and the universe along. I laugh at the thought, laugh at their incredulous mind boggling stares, at them mouths firming widely shut and open, heads scratching followed then by a response not as immediate but sure as hell foreseeable, them doing what humans are best known to do, naming me as such, naming a thing. “You, my darling, are just like that thing of yours. Too weird, too unknown, too off.”
Unusual as I am, floating in air, living in such a nonexistent reality, in such a dark place, a place called here and as the world seems to always be somehow there, a very distinct there - such a cast away unobscured there, life wanderlusting - life existing in between images and words, in staining light and unlit blackness, I as a soul, a soul carrying a body I draw everything in circles, circles connecting, connecting in eights. Drawing in a world behind closed doors, and minds, a world behind any and all grey filtered realities thrown at me. And I kinda wanted the world to see, I wanted you to see - and feel, and be. See the things I saw, the world I drew. To love the things I loved, hate the things I hated. To love I, to hate you.
So for those asking, how and then why HLAOTVEE. happened. It is all but a thing, a feeling I name my soul after.
To be in hate my darling, is to be in love -to be in love is to be in hate. In love, with love. In love with hate. There is no right or wrong, its all wrong if you ask me. There is no hate or love, its all about love. It all just is, an alternate universe, an alternate everything. Its a bundling mess of colours, of colours bursting in and shaking it all off, shaking you off. It is all those luminous points falling down the sky, igniting you and the darkness you dwell in. It is you and I, and the fictional world our souls make such an unhealthy habit of recklessly sketching inside us, painted drafts of a distant happiness - a world where we both secretly compose an inconceivable tale within, a world out of this golden barred, grey veiled cage. Its heartbreaking, heart stopping. It is everything, and then it is nothing. Freeing.
HLAOTVEE is just that, an infinite state, a map made out of feelings, of hearts, of I - of you. A compass pointing out all dreams, and feelings, and people. Especially them. People, the rare kind of, the ones you spend your whole life looking for. Those few. That one. The one you love, the one you hate. People inhabiting your soul, inhabiting you. All paint splattered, in colours and light. In you.
It was all long prolonged. Always there, a populated planet crafted in vivid imagery, of moments gone, crafted in feelings of love now buried in cement hate, a planet I lived in and out of, forever. A nonexistent in physical being, one. Until now, that is. A collective mess of creatures and places and long awaited, now long lost wasted wishes. The one place I felt like home, it was - it still is. I felt free. Free to love, free to hate. To exorcise the demons and dust them all off, to dance along with them, to dress them all up in fancy clothes, to dress them all down. To hate them, to love them. To cast spells, to find people - to make them feel, escape the cage. Escape the hate, escape you, them.
But hate, you silly thing, is just another word for love. Another lil word for such an immense feeling. And so it is, how it all began and how it all never seems to fade, never seems to end. It will never end. Because you see, love is such an absolute thing, such an absolute state, a state of the heart. And my he—art now named after HLAOTVEE, is such an absolute little thing, such an absolute you.
To be continued.
Epilogue.
A little disclaimer, “I dont see fashion in glossily edited, printed in vain tear sheets, nor in labels and numbers, in show-stopping empty personas and fake social anthems, full in glamourised hate. I see fashion in blank, half ruined canvases, in unknown tags and graffiti hues, in never-ending streets, full blown in art - in streets of people full in love.”
XO / HLAOTVEE.COM
