My Santiago

His Safe Place

That room was his safe place, his creative space. He grew up there!

In that cramped spot in this vast universe, replete with books, toys, furry animals,

he heard his first stories and knew his first friends;

friends who grew to life out of print, Friends who spoke to him every night in the same stories, with the same outcomes. Yes, he had grown up there, But in a different way! Here he befriended characters out of books; characters more real than reality, teaching him life, love and the space in between. He learned to laugh at odd things, not cruel laughter but unusual, nevertheless. The art of whimsy! He learned to capture the essence of a moment, a face, with deft strokes of a fine lined art pen.

And he patched groups of words later recognised as lyrics.

And he learned vulnerability.

In the unguarded moment, he resented this fragility,

this need to feel safe. This ability to escape from the grit and griminess of the world. And maybe it could have all been different, had it been a different room, a different set of stories, leading to different vulnerabilities? Or perhaps nothing to fear,

no one to please? Just a life to live!