Any lover of art can tell you that the standard rules of physics do not fully apply to those who enter a gallery or a museum, because they are magical. The magnetic field of the earth becomes a tad bit stronger with every brush stroke, faint or precise, and gravity pulls down on the entranced souls a little bit harder, effectively glueing them to the spot they stand in. Time ticks by slowly, until it is but a memory in the minds of those who dwell inside. Some rooms house works whose magic alone creates an aura that no print or photo can ever reproduce.
Florence Welch is one of those people who loves to find herself lost in between paintings and sculptures, installations and artistic performances, whenever she can take a break from her life on the road. She is never alone when there are paintings with her, in spite of what the tattoo on her arm says. No, the Black Paintings of Goya are all she needs to keep her company in the virtually empty wing of Museo del Prado. Dark and monstrous, they beckon her green eyes to become one of them, and one of them she has become.
Saturn and the witches come alive before her eyes in their bloody glory, contorted in horror and bliss, and Florence soars. She’s always had a penchant for the dark and dramatic, for demons and monsters and writhing figures, the heretics in the underworld. She floats and floats and floats with her eyes closed, until her fingers touch the high ceiling of the room, blissful.
And she starts falling. She’s falling when the rituals and the black give way to sorrowful yellow and brown, when the monsters and the big gods turn into a small, small dog. El Perro, a portrait of all of the loneliness of the world, her old friend. All the loneliness of the word fits in her chest, but the dog’s watery grey eyes are not hers. Florence has seen the before, the same grey shade, the same lost yearning in a scribbled-out name. When she peels the layers of ink back to see what name is written in the dog’s eyes, Florence hits the ground.
Isabella Summers does love art, she does get lost in it when she can, but standing there in a room full of the finest Spanish art, she can only look at Florence. She is the Nike of Samothrace in her long flowing gowns, commanding crowd after crowd, she is a Klimtian muse when she tips her head back, a Goyan witch when her eyes bore into you. A living painting that no collector will ever have. Isa wants to frame her in gold and hang her in the depths of her home, but she couldn’t stand to see the paint Florence is made of crack and fall off when kept inside anyone’s private gallery.
Isa has to let go. She has to, or she will be stuck in this walkround gallery, gravitating around Florence as time drags behind her, but passes nonetheless. It’s been years, Isa is almost forty now, she should know better than to follow that aura she cannot put into words. Isa knows just how far her own talents go, but she still follows Florence into another tour of an album that she had no part in the making, she follows Florence into this room full of images she should at least try to absorb, but she cannot. Not when the sobs wrack the redhead’s thin frame and her shoulders shake.
Isa moves without thinking of anything else except comforting Florence. Suddenly she is no longer paint and marble and beauty and art, she is her friend, her secret love, frail and hopeless, standing lonely in a strange room. Isa’s arms wrap around Florence and she presses her face into her shoulder, that suddenly goes still. Isa sucks in a breath and wonders if she tried once again to frame Florence, but the taller woman turns and crushes Isa against herself even harder.
“Where would I be without you, Isa?” Florence croaks. “I won’t leave you, not again. Oh, Isa, I...I…”
“Shhhhhhhh, Flossie,” Isa whispers back. “I’ll never leave you either, honey. You’re stuck with me. Florrible and Misrabella for life.”
“I love you.”
“I love you too, Flo.”
Florence unglues herself from Isa’s shoulder and looks at her properly for the first time in a while. Grey eyes full of resignation, a small dog’s eyes. She knows then that it’s time to stop falling.
“No, Isa, I love you love you. All these years and these relationships that left me so lonely when you were right here and you were so lonely too and I…” She trails off as another sob escapes her lips. “I’ve always been in love with you.”
Isa doesn’t know if it’s the magical physics of the place or the weight of the words she’s just heard directed at her for the first time, but she feels as if time stood still. She only knows it’s still passing because the tears pooling in her eyes fall slowly down her face. She cups Florence’s face without thinking, kisses her again and again and again without thinking, until they’re both breathless and shaky and only slightly aware of the public place they are in. Florence searches Isa’s eyes for that old dog stare but she cannot find it. When she hits the ground with Isa in her arms, there is no pain. There is talking to be done, songs to be explained, tears to be shed still, but Florence is calm through it all as long as Isa’s eyes remain bright and loving.
Time passes so slowly in that room full of art that neither Florence nor Isa can see that an entire age has come to an end, although they feel it inside of them. The dog days are finally over.