Timeless Brothers

These young men arrived at the studio on a Sunday afternoon with their mother who I have known for a very very long time. It’s always shocking to see kids after you haven’t seen them in a while. They both used to be so tiny and suddenly one of them became a long bean pole of a man boy. The mind is funny like that. It freezes everything in time from the last moment that you saw it. People never age. The towns that we came from never change. Everything is eternal until you see it again. There are some theoretical physicist who believe that matter does not exist without something to observe it. It’s a bizarre idea to think that the world around us is not real unless we give it life from our own imaginations. I wish the physicist were correct so that somehow I could switch on my ability to think reality the way that I actually want it to be. I could stop myself in the stream time so that no gray hair, wrinkles, hunched back, or pot belly would ever find me. The boys ran about the studio and played with all the energy young boys have. They also had all of the innocence that young boys who come from a good home have. I wonder what they will grow up to become. Their father is a Senegalese painter who has a keen mind for color and abstract idealization on canvas. Their mother is a Japanese psychologist whose brilliance has continuously impressed me for the decades that I’ve known her. Within those boys’ DNA is the primary elements needed for greatness. That’s a silly thing to write though because all children have within them the elements needed for greatness. Sure DNA plays a role but the mind is a powerful thing and how we see ourselves shapes who we become. Both of these young men have a passion for soccer. The younger one likes to play in real time the older one likes to play in video games. Maybe they’ll grow up to be athletes, computer programmers, physical therapists or something that has nothing to do with soccer at all. Who they become has infinite possibilities. Like saplings in the earth, they need sunshine, freshwater, and nourishment to grow into strong trees. For now, they are frozen in this moment. I froze them here in this photograph but you have frozen them as well. For all of eternity in all of our minds they will be two young brothers playing together in a studio somewhere in Tokyo.