If art does not kill me then love of a man most certainly will. My passion remains intact.
When was the last time your heart was broken? Or you were madly in love, torn by desire or infatuated by a divine beauty of the person you adored on a one-way speedway of love?
Consider yourself lucky if you were spared of pain that comes with the harsh awakening. But if none of your mornings haven’t dawned with eyes swollen with tears and guts pierced by ignorance or rejection, you may also feel poor and deprived of the force that built the universe and destroyed empires.
In PANTONE 3537 UP, Sean August Horvath bares himself naked from hairs on his skin to his bone marrow as he glorifies his love for a man who doesn’t deserve him nor cares enough for him to whisper his name back. Horvath is a helpless romantic (sounds familiar?!) who crashes headlong into a brief love affair. Not holding back anything, giving the best of him.
PANTONE 3537 UP is a touching, deep and detailed chronology of birth and death of one love (affair), illustrated by the artwork of the talented author. It is poetry, one giant poem, supercharged with raw emotions and pondering: I fear I’ve reached a point of no return. The emotions I held have become razor sharp and covered in rust. Safety requires I now place them into those vaults and let them decompose in the depths of my gut, never to surface again. I will reflect on them with disappointment and regret. I will crush all the pleasant memories to stay sane.
You can taste the author’s pain as he laments unrequited love and the bitterness of tears while he struggles for sanity and acceptance that whatever they have had is gone and must be forgotten: Where once there was obsession now lives indifference sprinkled with subtle numbness. An accidental fortifying of the heart. We must burn it down. Set flame to all feelings.
If we read this romantic collection of poetry with an open heart and free mind, letting its passion, yearning and honesty sip onto our scathed soul, we might feel our own wounds closing and heal. With recognition, acceptance, closure and new hope. Hope—forever cruel and tragic and beautiful, as the author says.
BJ