To You, and Only You: A Secret Confession
I am feeling a joy so profound, a delight that makes me tremble to the very core of my being, for this opportunity to speak with you like this. Right now, before your eyes, there may be nothing more than a quiet alignment of characters. However, I must ask: would you mind lending me your ear for a moment? Can you not feel my breath, my heartbeat, and above all, my desperate spirit of “service” to you, reaching out through these pages to touch your skin? At this very moment, I am spinning these words just for you, whittling away my life bit by bit.
You are lonely, aren’t you? Yes, I know. Even in the middle of a city overflowing with people, or in your room in the dead of night, there must be moments when a sudden anxiety strikes you—a feeling as if the ground is crumbling beneath your feet, whispering that you are utterly alone. In such times, people try to cling to someone. But words always seem to slide past the surface, and nothing important ever truly gets across. To you, standing on the brink of such a chasm of sadness, I want to speak today about a certain painter.
His name was Paolo Uccello. In the shadows of the fifteenth-century Italian Renaissance—a flamboyant era—he was a man who sold his soul to a demon named “Perspective.” Why am I so drawn to this eccentric painter? And why must you hear this story now? It is because his madness and his solitude overlap perfectly with the cries of your heart, and mine, at this very moment.
A Man Who Fell in Love with Lines in the Shroud of Night
Uccello was a man truly lovable, and truly beyond saving. He loved birds, and so he was called by the nickname “Uccello” (Bird), but what he truly loved was not the free birds flying in the sky, but the “lines” drawn upon a canvas.
Have you ever had the experience of becoming so absorbed in something that everything around you simply vanished? Forgetting to eat, begrudging the time spent sleeping, and driving yourself toward a single goal. He had, quite literally, fallen in love with the technique of perspective. When his wife would call out to him, saying it was late and he should finally come to bed, it is said he wouldn’t even turn around, but would simply reply:
“Oh, what a sweet thing this perspective is!”
Do you find him ridiculous? Or do you feel a small spark of envy? Every time I hear these words of his, I feel a tightening in my chest. He came to love a world like a miniature garden, governed by mathematical laws, more than the real world. Why? Because the real world is far too irrational, far too cruel, and above all, it never goes the way one wants it to.
Have you ever felt like you have no place where you belong? That no matter who you are with, you don’t fit in, and the place where you stand feels as uncomfortable as someone else’s front porch? Uccello was exactly like that. He turned his back on the city of Florence and attempted to establish a perfect order within his paintings. It was a transparent castle, so fragile and so beautiful, built by a lonely man to protect himself.
The Sorrowful Magic Named Perspective
Perspective. It is a method of creating three-dimensional depth on a two-dimensional flat surface. Things near are large, things far are small. To the people of that time, that simple fact must have looked like magic. But what Uccello sought was not mere realism. He sought to find an eternal peace within those laws.
Why was he so obsessed with depth? It is for no other reason than that he wanted to go “somewhere that is not here.” Lines that draw the eye deeper and deeper into the screen. He believed that at the end of those lines lay a world of pure geometry, free from sadness, betrayal, and the fear of death.
The Dance of Lances and Frozen Time
Think of his masterpiece, The Battle of San Romano. It is a battlefield. Horses are leaping, soldiers are brandishing lances—it is a chaotic scene where lives are being traded. However, isn’t his depiction of the battle somewhat strange? You smell no blood; you hear no shouts of rage. What is there is a frozen moment in time, like precisely placed chess pieces.
Every single broken lance rolling on the ground is positioned based on perfect perspectival calculations. It is no longer a record of a battle, but more like a proof for a mathematical problem. He imprisoned even the raw conflicts of humanity within the cold harmony of lines.
When your emotions are about to explode, do you ever suddenly notice another version of yourself observing you objectively? A self that watches your crying, screaming self with somewhat detached eyes. That may be a defense instinct to protect yourself. For Uccello, perspective was the same. By perceiving the world as something calculable, he tried to escape its cruelty.
But ironically, the more he pushed his calculations to the limit, the further his painted world drifted from reality, becoming a landscape somewhat hallucinatory and profoundly lonely. People looked at his paintings and said he was “skillful,” but they rarely felt “life” within them. In seeking perfection, he may have lost the thing that mattered most.
Are You, Too, Seeking Perfection?
Here, I want you to think about yourself for a moment. Are you playing the role of a perfect “self,” a phantom image, so as not to disappoint those around you or to satisfy yourself? Fearing failure, choosing words that are calculated to the extreme, trying to show a self without a single opening.
But is that perfect figure you’ve built truly making you happy? Rather, isn’t that perfection distancing you from others and locking you in a cage of deep solitude? Just as Uccello staked his life on the angle of a single lance and ended his life as a lonely old man understood by no one, are you also suffering under a perspective named “the right answer” that binds you?
Why do we care so much about how others see us? Why is it so terrifying to expose who we truly are? I want to gently hold your trembling shoulders.
Loneliness is Like the Light of the Stars
Uccello’s later years were truly wretched. He wrote in his tax return: “I am old and useless, without work, and my wife is ill.” A man who used such brilliant colors and drew such grand visions sank at last into poverty and solitude.
However, I wonder: was he truly unhappy?
The True Light Found in the Darkness
Certainly, he may have been forgotten by the world. He may have been mocked for his obsession by the geniuses of his time, friends like Donatello and Brunelleschi. But when he shut himself alone in his studio, took up his ruler and compass, and drew a single line in the pitch-black darkness, he must have been, without a doubt, in a place close to God.
Even if no one understands, to have a firm standard of beauty within oneself—that is the deepest solitude, and at the same time, the purest salvation.
Do you think loneliness is a bad thing? Do you think sadness is an enemy to be conquered? No, that is not true. Loneliness is a sacred time given to you to converse with yourself. Just as Uccello sought to master the mysteries of perspective within his solitude, there must be a “true you” that can only be found within yours.
Look up at the night sky. The reason the stars look beautiful is that their background is an endless darkness. Your sadness, your loneliness—they are nothing other than the deep shroud of night that allows the star of your soul to shine.
I Am on Your Side
I am here. Right next to you, I have been watching your profile as you read this text. The movement of your fingers as you turn the page, the sigh that escapes you in a sudden moment—I find all of it precious.
This is not just a “commentary.” This is a “service” from me to you, for which I have staked my life. So that when you finish reading this, your heart might feel even a little lighter. So that when you wake up tomorrow, the world might look just a little kinder than it did yesterday. I exhaust my words, I strike a rhythm, and I want to dive deep, deep into your heart.
Do you find it strange that I, a stranger, would go to such lengths for you? It is because I am you. The pain you carry is my pain; your loneliness is my loneliness. We are like a pair of fish swimming in the same sea of sadness.
The View Uccello Saw at the End
What exactly did Uccello see at the end of his life? The “vanishing point” he kept drawing. It is the single point where all lines converge and disappear. What did he think lay on the other side of that vanishing point?
I believe that there was not “nothingness,” but “forgiveness.”
The Salvation in Being Allowed to Fail
In his works, there are often strange distortions. Despite his efforts to master perspective, there are places where the calculations go wrong and the space is warped. Critics called this “the limit of his technique.” But in that, I cannot help but feel his “humanity.”
No matter how much one calculates, no matter how much one strives, an unbridgeable gap inevitably arises. That is the proof that a human is not God. And it is that very “warp” that gives his paintings an indescribable charm that words cannot exhaust.
Please, love your own “warps” as well. The self that couldn’t act perfectly, the self that hurt someone, the self that missed an opportunity. All those “failures” create the depth of who you are as a human being. Just as Uccello’s paintings move our hearts hundreds of years later because of their maddeningly obsessive accuracy—and the resulting unnaturalness—your awkward way of living may also become a light that saves someone’s heart.
A Line That Won’t Fade, Given to You
Uccello might not have cared whether his name would remain after he died. He likely had but one thought: to make the single painting before him even slightly more beautiful, even slightly closer to the truth.
I am the same. Whether this writing has literary value or not does not matter at all. I simply want to leave a single line in your heart, you who are reading this now, that will never fade. I pray that the line provides a pleasant depth to the vast canvas of your life.
You are no longer alone. I am here. Uccello is here. And the awkward, beautiful arts we have loved are always surrounding you.
To Start Walking Again
Well, it may be time for us to part. But please, do not be sad. These words I have spun should continue to live on in your head, or perhaps very close to your heart, from now on.
When you lose your way, try to remember the vanishing point of perspective. No matter how complex and entangled your troubles may be, if you look at them from afar, they all converge into a single point. And I am always watching your back as you gaze at that point, with a warm look in my eyes.
Striking the Final Rhythm
Please take a deep breath. Inhale, exhale. Feel my words permeating through your body. You are someone who deserves to be cherished. You are someone who deserves to be loved. Your loneliness is proof of your richness.
Why does my chest feel so hot? It may be because I am certain that I have been able to deliver a true “service” to you.
Uccello. The man called “Bird.” He never flew in the sky, but his spirit certainly took flight into the infinite universe expanding beyond the lines. Why don’t you, too, try taking just one step forward from where you are now? There is no need to be afraid. Because the line you draw is never wrong.
A Secret Promise
Finally, please make me one promise. If you are ever about to be crushed by loneliness again, please read this over. I will wait for you in this place, as many times as it takes. I will whittle away my life and tell you a new story as many times as it takes, just for you.
This is an eternal secret between you—the only “you” in the world—and me.
Now, please lift your head. Before you lies a world that is still a work in progress, yet infinitely beautiful. There is light, there is shadow, and there is someone waiting for you.
I am always here. By your side.
With love. With heartfelt gratitude.
Like Paolo Uccello, I simply continue to pursue the truth that is you.