The call to adventure

I will always go back to Paris, it's the only place I’m truly happy.

Apologies to Picasso for paraphrasing him here, but his words written on a wall in Musée de Montmartre have always been haunting. There is something in Paris for me that I never find anywhere else. Not in London. Certainly not in Hamburg. It’s the art. Yes, everywhere has art, but not everywhere brings art to the surface with the ease that Paris does. There are many small museums to find by accident if you take the right turning up a street. Yes, every big city has museums, but few cities host the art that Paris does as the birthplace of Impressionism. Few places have art on the streets like Paris does. Few places have the architecture that Paris does. That accumulated art makes Paris a 1% of the 1% of the 1%. So, for me, being in Paris is like swimming in art.

Every time I go to Paris I’m transformed: I always come back different. So, what is the source of the transformation? And what’s the appeal of transformation for someone autistic, a neurology typically associated with entrenched patterns of behaviour?

The source of the transformation is art for to be living in art, especially great art, is to inevitably open the door to transformation. But this is the easy part to answer. The more difficult question is why should art be transformative at all?

When art is created, something is brought into the world that wasn’t there before. The personality, temperament, skill, perception, sensitivity, process, and experience with which the work was created is unique. This accumulation of individual traits and skills made manifest in art grants us a unique perception of the world. So entering a gallery is diving into art, swimming in a million different sensibilities.

And when it’s great art… how much more impactful then. It’s this that makes it into the museums: the thin sliver of art that will long be remembered, that draws people from all over the world to marvel at it. As I’ve previously captured in seeking to understand the significance of building a temple, we can build a temple to anything. What are we doing when we cross national borders or continents to go to see art in a great building if not undertaking a pilgrimage? We can call it something else, but pilgrimmage is the best word in English for this.

Then, above great art, sits the art that transforms its own discipline. This is art that might emerge in each discipline but once in a generation. Art such as Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe is art that takes its discipline in a different direction irrespective of protestations. In it, we see all the greatest elements of creativity brought to life in a single piece. That connects us with great creativity and the perceptive qualities of the creator. So art contains unique pathways to seeing the world in a wholly new way, for something that can change an entire discipline certainly holds the power to change an individual.

So what then is the appeal of transformation to someone autistic, a neurology commonly associated with preference for established patterns of behaviour, for routines? Five years ago when I was due to visit Paris, I was filled with absolute certainty that going to Paris would kill me. For some reason I had the sense that merely going there would kill me. But I still went. Understanding exactly why I should do so in the face of such certainty isn’t clear to me. Why should I process to my death? And it happened, but it was a symbolic death because that’s exactly what transformation is.

I have a clear understanding of the need for transformation as it opens the door to the future with all its potential. But that’s challenged by the need for routine. The challenge then is to overcome the fear of ‘death’ long enough to accept the call to adventure of the hero’s journey. Perhaps having followed the call this far, I’ve developed enough resilience to accept more challenges, more ‘deaths’.

Perhaps rather than going through rare adventures in a big way, I'm willing and resilient enough to live in adventure, to never go back to the ordinary world.

I will go back to Paris soon, but I don't want to go back, I need to go back. I need to live there. Need, not want. Every day, on the inside, I go back to Paris. I go back to Montmartre, to Versailles, to a great café and restaurant, to streets I can walk down with the same certainty as someone who was born there, to some of the greatest art ever created, to acceptance of the near divinity of art.

After too many years in stasis, a deep seated need for adventure has taken hold. With happy and meaningful memories of Paris as the source of many of my greatest adventures, there's nowhere else to be.