My Friends

by Fredrik Backman

The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations. The new needs friends. —Anton Ego

Fragile hearts break in palaces and in dark alleys alike.

This is a painting of laughter, and you can only understand that if you’re full of holes, because then laughter is a small treasure.

The artist? He was good at seeing the beauty in everything, that happens if you’re no good at seeing it in yourself.

Not to be mean, but healthy people aren’t quite right in the head, the artist thinks. Surely taking life for granted is the whole point of being here, because what else are we doing? We’re a bunch of lonely apes on a rock in the universe, our breath consists of eighty percent nitrogen, twenty percent oxygen, and one hundred percent anxiety. The only thing we can take for granted is that everyone we have ever met and everyone we have ever known and everyone we have ever loved will die. So how great must our imaginations be for us to even summon up the enthusiasm to get out of bed each morning? Endless! Imagination is the only thing that stops us from thinking about death every second. And when we aren’t thinking? Oh, those are all our very best moments, when we’re wasting our lives. It’s an act of magnificent rebellion to do meaningless things, to waste time, to swim and drink soda and sleep late. To be silly and frivolous, to laugh at stupid little jokes and tell stupid little stories. Or to paint big paintings, the biggest you can manage, and to try to learn to whisper in color. To look for a way to show other people: this was me, these were my humans, these were our farts. These were our bodies, and they were small, far too small, because they couldn’t contain all our love.

Adults often think that self-confidence is something a child learns, but little kids are by their nature always invincible, it’s self-doubt that needs to be taught. And oh, how the artist was taught, because the world has spent thousands of years practicing how to puncture the lungs of children who are different. In preschool it had taken a long time for adults to realize that the artist didn’t like it when anyone touched him, but of course the other children had realized this at once, so they would creep up on him and prod him until he screamed. Sometimes he would flail about himself in panic and couldn’t be calmed down, and then his parents would be summoned to talk to the teachers that afternoon. Even as a five-year-old, he had learned to recognize the shame in their eyes.

The artist was an observer, he couldn’t bear to be observed, the world always gets those mixed up.

The artist’s bookcases were full of poets, like the bookcases of anyone trying to find out how everyone else copes.

They stare at each other, the thirty-nine-year-old and the eighteen-year-old, with funerals in their eyes. It’s hard to cope with seeing yourself in someone else.

It’s the first time he’s heard her sound uncertain, as if she’s worried she’s wrong and might appear stupid. Ted’s shoulders slump, it’s a burden to hear yourself in others.

Because adults like him don’t understand that adults have to be adults so that children can be children.

Great art is a small break from human despair, she explained to her son.

Art is what we leave of ourselves in other people.”

“Isn’t it like, totally unbelievable that we even exist? So it won’t be a tragedy when we don’t exist anymore! It’s just cool, really cool, that we happened at all.”

Art is what can’t fit inside a person. The things that bubble over,”

“Maybe it’s hurt inside?” Ted said sadly. “It’s probably just frightened!” Joar said. “That’s the same thing,” Ted pointed out softly.

“Is it always that cold in the sea?” she wonders. “No. Sometimes it’s much colder,” he smiles. “I’ve never felt like this, my skin feels different…” “There’s nothing like the sea. Now your skin knows that. Now it’s going to miss it, always,” he promises.

But I think you’ve both given each other the same amount: everything you had.”

“It might sound like an unhappy ending, but only if you forget how many times during this story we’ve told you that someone laughed. How many really good nows is that? How many people ever have more?”

“It’s art that helps me cope. Because art is a fragile magic, just like love, and that’s humanity’s only defense against death. That we create and paint and dance and fall in love, that’s our rebellion against eternity.