Are the Eyes a Reflection of the Soul?

Day 7, Saturday 24th March 2018

Saturday. Dreaded Saturday. It’s the day where work and it’s inherent structure doesn’t exist, where the warm, stable bath of urgent commitments and tasks are absent. Saturday is the day when being single can bring exalted happiness or bereft isolation. Today, I have these words and lots of friends to keep life moving, if I can get myself to move.

From Monday to Friday I sat down and wrote a few hundred words, then published them in just thirty minutes, a triumph of quick, expressive writing. I reach today, Saturday, and the lazy, slow, unstructured day leads my thoughts to wallow and daze, sitting unformed at the side of my mind as Twitter, procrastination and relaxation hover around the peripheries of my vision. Eventually, my thoughts have turned to the unnerving experience I had last night whilst visiting an art exhibition.

Modigliani, the Italian artist, had a peculiar trait whereby he often didn’t paint the eyes of his victims, errr, sorry, subjects. Eyes are famously windows to our souls, yet his paintings featured characters who appeared exquisitely expressive, whilst sporting blank, dead eyes. This evoked a grisly connection in me, recalling memories of Francis Dolarhyde in Red Dragon, a serial killer who would place small fragments of mirror in his victims’ eye sockets, to make them appear alive again.

The collection of Modigliani’s work that I saw last night held mixed appeal, some pieces were breathtaking…