Nocturne #41 – God of Paper

Well, I had a rather difficult childhood, but – an interesting one. In another nocturne, I wrote that as a child, having no musical instrument, I drew piano keys on a wooden table with a pen, imagined the notes, and pretended to play. Now I’ll tell you a similar, but different story.

As a child, I loved creating different worlds. Back when my peers were entertaining themselves with various video games, I didn’t have a computer then. The first time I saw GTA Vice City gameplay in an internet cafe – I still remember those mind-blowing emotions. Yeah, I had almost nothing for entertainment, lacked many things, but what I didn’t lack was – boundless imagination, the ability to envision, and ideas. The passion for creating something started in me right from the beginning.

Somehow, I became interested in cartography (though I didn’t know its name then) and drew maps of imaginary islands and continents on paper – with their regions, countries, and city urbanization, scattered roads, buildings, parks, airports, mountains, rivers, lakes. I remember trying to make the maps have maximally realistic shapes and contours. First, I’d outline the shape, then rivers, coasts, lakes, and finally finish with clustered mountain peaks. Then, step by step, I’d start arranging the infrastructure. (Seriously, I swear I had no idea what Cities XXL or SimCity was) . I tried to clearly depict peninsulas, bays, archipelagos to make the overview of my world richer and more expressive. Separately, I drew their inhabitant characters, invented different car models. I don’t remember exactly now, but I used to give strange names to everything.

These creative processes were completely sufficient for me to live there, in my own drawn futuristic megalopolis, in a small cottage somewhere on a seaside street. Then I could move from one city to another in an expensive car, or even by high-speed train. Parallel to this, I wrote little stories for the fictional countries and cities. They even had their own presidents and governors. I remember even geometrically measuring the regions – in square millimeters. Moreover: I had compiled something like a small encyclopedia, recording the parameters of each region or city. Even the route from city to city was logically thought out. Does transport have to take a long detour to get from one city to another? No problem! Hand me the pen! I’ll draw a small zigzag line and that’s it! (Though yeah, despite being able to lay and open a connecting road in a second, my budget wasn’t exactly unlimited. After all, pen ink runs out…) . In short. This was my kind of hobby, a game, call it what you want – I could create an imaginary area and be the god of this little micro-universe.

Later, when I grew up and the computer became my tool, I thought: let’s transform this idea of mine into a 3D version – create a kind of Marvel-esque universe and bring to life all those characters I imagined would change all worlds, build all those skyscrapers that would transcend the limits of two dimensions and soar into the sky, rev up all those cars that died on paper. Yeah, I really thought at one time that this passion should have some continuation…. But this idea too faded into oblivion, just like the story itself….

Now I realize, what an interesting and mischievous brat I was, eh…. That existential curiosity follows me to this day….

P.S. Maybe I’m already somewhere there…. P.P.S. You too….