Stories of the 6

It’s 7 a.m. and Louis starts his day with a black coffee and a cigarette as he slowly struts to his Manhattan bound 6 train. What surrounds him at home is vastly different from what he sees throughout the day at his locksmith job in midtown. Day in and day out he falls deeper and deeper into the repetitive nature that is the normal 9-5. That was until one evening, on his hour long train ride back to his apartment in Hunts Point. He witnessed a gentleman, slender and a bit unkempt, sketching with his ballpoint into a moleskine notebook. Louis didn’t think much of it, but he did notice this gentleman’s tendency of looking around the subway car briefly and proceeding to scratch his ballpoint back into the pages of his moleskine notebook. As the 6 train pulled into a station the gentleman hastily got up and left the car. Louis noticed the moleskine notebook on the seat just before the doors closed and as he sat up to yell for the gentleman, the doors closed. Louis picked up the book and put it in his backpack thinking he may run into the slender gentleman again. Louis looked for the gentleman day after day hoping to see him again to return his journal. A week goes by with no sighting. Louis decides to see what it is that this slender gentleman was scratching so rapidly into his moleskine notebook. Upon opening the first page he is looking at beautiful life like renderings of train riders in the subway. As he looks at page after page, he digests the blue ink. Captivated by the subtle beauty of what this gentleman was seeing through his eyes, he gets to the middle of the book where he found himself. Louis looked at himself and saw what the slender gentleman had seen; pain, but captured in a beautiful way.

The following morning, Louis went about his routine but with a slight variation, his own pen. As he entered his train he began to look around and observe other passengers that surrounded him. He recognized a similar pain in others that he saw within the rendition of himself the day before. The notebook provided not only paper to draw on but a new set of eyes to see his fellow passengers' true emotions. Day after day he takes his moleskine notebook with him to midtown and sketches. What used to be the most dreaded part of Louis’s day became his most motivating.

As the years go by Louis fills up many moleskine books. One evening riding home, as he is sketching into his moleskine realizes the true gift that has been given to him, the beauty of seeing. The following day he puts in his two weeks notice in at his job and takes the plunge to become a full-time artist. Louis begins his journey slowly with simple artistic jobs, from selling his ideas to local shops for murals to creating logos for new companies. He realizes he’s never felt truly fulfilled until this moment in time.

Through all his hard work and creating, he finally achieves his perceived goal, his first gallery opening. The night of Louis’s opening he is greeted and approached by many unfamiliar faces. These faces were well manicured, the clothing very chic, the language very educated which overwhelmed Louis to the point of uncertainty. As the night progresses, one painting is sold, then another, and another until almost all of his hard work was sold off to people he did not know or resonate with. With all the pieces sold, Louis still did not get the satisfaction he got when he found that moleskine notebook. So Louis did what made him happy, he took the train home.

Months after his successful exhibition Louis is on the train doing what he loves. As he is a few stops away from his station he looks up and sees a familiar face, one he hasn’t seen in a long time but can’t seem to get out of his thoughts because of the impact that he made. The slender gentleman was sleeping slouched over, whiskey on his breath and covered in paint. Louis felt for him, however did not want to bother, so Louis missed his stop and decided to draw his inspiration. As the train pulls into the last station Louis writes him a letter explaining how he inspired him to become the happy and successful individual he is today. Louis folds up the letter and places it in his sketch filled moleskine notebook along with a check made out to cash. This was a simple $20,000 gesture that Louis felt was necessary because it was never about the money, but the creative freedom that the slender gentleman showed Louis.