4 – Infinite Bravery – A Short Story Inspired by Danielle Krysa’s Art

[If your podcast app isn’t showing the featured art for this episode above visit rebekahnemethy.com/artink4 to check it out.

Castbox and Podcast Addict are both apps I recommend that do show episode specific art.]

Links from the Show at a Glance:

Artist: Danielle Krysa

Title of Art: untitled

Artist’s Website: http://www.krysa.com/danielle/

Instagram: @daniellekrysaart

Danielle’s Podcast: The Jealous Curator

The first episode of Art Ink to hear the story of how The Jealous Curator podcast helped me solve a problem with this show

Art Ink Submission Guidelines: rebekahnemethy.com/artinksubs

Art Ink Podcast Transcript:

[Intro:]

Welcome back everyone! I’m thrilled you’re here to listen because I have a really fun story for you today.

Today’s featured artist is Danielle Krysa, and if you listened to the very first episode of this podcast, you’d know that her podcast, The Jealous Curator, had a hand in helping me figure out a problem I was having with this podcast and so I figured I just had to include some of her work in this podcast because, I mean, karma, right? She did me a favor, even though maybe not intentionally, so I figured I should pay her back somehow.

I found this piece on her Instagram and... let me just give you a little description to start us off:

[Art Description:]

This is a minimalistic mixed media piece with what looks like watercolor and acrylic paints with a splash of collage. A sailboat cutout is resting atop a cloud of aquamarine blue paint on the bottom right of the image. Pink and metallic bronze paints hover above and to the left of the sailing ship, resembling a distant sunset.

On Instagram, Danielle captioned her art: “some guys promised ‘sailing off into the sunset,’ but cap’n carl f’n delivered.” And so both the art and the caption had a part in creating the following story which features the cap’n carl I imagined.

[Story:]

I was NOT dreaming. I’d already done all the tests: pinched myself, read the same sign twice without scrambling the words or letters, I’d even closed my eyes, spun around, and opened them again to see the same scene.

I looked over the edge of the bow. The ship was floating on a shimmery, blue cloud of water so shallow it was translucent. I was on a magical journey, about to leave everything I’ve ever known.

Cap’n Carl had a skullet, you know, the balding man’s version of a mullet, and black holes where teeth used to be. The top of his head was like a dandelion, when the breeze would pick up, and the sails caught the wind, so too would large petals of peeling skin. They’d flutter and flap in the wind and, eventually release into the sky. I wondered if I might have a wish or two come true if blew on his head and managed to unhinge all the dead skin in one breath.

According to Cap’n Carl, though, my wishes were about to come true anyway. I was going to a place where time was infinite and money non-existent. It was still hard to believe, though, just as it would have been hard for anyone else to believe I’d be on a sailboat that soared through the sky... yet here I was, living that dream; passing clouds, chasing the sun’s bronze rays as it painted the clouds in our path.

Forever was a scary premise for most people, but not for me, there were too many stories inside me that still had to come out. And if I didn’t choose forever, I’d be choosing death. I’d be choosing to let my stories die with me. With the cancer that was cooking inside me, doctors estimated that in six months I’d be done.

According to Cap’n Carl, there was still time to change my mind. We had until sunset before there was no going back; all we had to do was walk the plank, metaphorically and literally speaking, and we’d instantly regress into our old lives.

We’d set sail with about a dozen other passengers. Most of them were also terminally ill, death-fearing people like me. But apparently, infinity was much scarier to them than death, because there was only one woman left aside from me. She was peering over the edge, her gaze switching between the setting sun and the sparkling sea below.

I looked back at Cap’n Carl, his smile was eager, but bordering on maniacal.

A splash sounded a...