Farewell La Vie

I’ve just been dismantling the gallery.  I was suprised it was such an easy decision to make even though realistically I had no choice. I had a car accident last year and one of the residual side effects was that I lost the ability to create.  I’ve tried a couple of times since then and the results have been good, but it was no longer satisfying.  I felt like a jobsworth going through the motions.  So, the gallery has just sat there, trapped in time.

To compensate for my loss of creativity, I started to build things.  Which is how NDC came about.  The problem was that while it is interesting to build more complex things and does give me a small level of creative satisfaction, it’s just not the same. 

It doesn’t help that I hate scripting with a passion and rather than stick to one particular genre and to my limitations, I want to create things that are outside my scripting skillset.  Some of them have been impossible to do as lsl is too limited and others just required a scripter who could deliver.  The fallout from windlight, havok4 and a few other things that LL have deployed, along with the bugs in the system have each eroded the pleasure of creation. 

I’ve only found one who had the time and patience to create with me and that was Matias Carter.  If you ever need a scripter and you can convince him to do the work for you, you won’t be disappointed.

I was feeling quite sad as I was taking the items down.  Each of them has a creation memory for me and there were such bittersweet emotions as I remembered the how, where and why of each piece.  I always found it remarkable that the emotions I felt as I created each piece could be felt by people who were close to me.  It was the same with the pics on ipernity. 

That is one of the strengths of Second Life, it hones the emotions and the mind of people you are close to.  So many people don’t recognise, value or understand that.  Human beings are such remarkable souls, when one sense is deprived the others are sharpened to compensate.  In Second Life this can create magic.

I managed to pack up the gallery itself quite easily, there was sadness there but nothing too grim.  When I got to the garden though it was a different story.  I couldn’t bring myself to take it away.  It may not be the most fabulous garden in this world of ours, but I’ve always loved it.  The land is on the top of a hill and when I first moved there I was pretty well the only one around in the 4 sims.  I used to hang out there to watch the sunrise and sunsets or just to sit quietly and admire my trees. 

I’ve always had a thing about sunsets and sunrises, both in rl and in sl.  I love watching the light and the colours of the sky change.  Call me odd, but there was a sculpture I created inworld called The Path and it used to move through the most magnificent colours as the sun set.  For months if I was inworld for sunset, I would dash home to sit there and marvel as it changed with the light.  Of course windlight put a stop to that, pretty skies just didn’t make up for the fact I lost my chance to savour that sculpture.

So I’ve left the garden for the moment.  I’ll take it down soon but not just yet, I need a few more sunsets first I think.

A big warm thank you to everyone who bought my pieces inworld or sent me messages with their response to the art. One of the true pleasures the gallery brought me was hearing what people thought, both good and bad.  All the art was designed to create a response in people, but you had to not just look but see.  

Those that did spend the time and then spoke to me added so much to my time with La Vie.  From the gay angel (that was his tag) with whom I had a lovely chat until his mother called him to dinner to the french pair who walked though the gallery and insulted every single piece in French and in chat, it’s been memorable and completely worthwhile. 

All the memories of La Vie, from those early days when I struggled to work out how to set up the most basic vendor imaginable when I was setting up the intial gallery at Koss, to my first visitor (some kind of vigilante gun nut who vanished as soon as he saw me), spending time on the roof teaching Caz the basics of building, a slavegirl from Gor who  was being pursued by some terrible people (also on the roof, that roof saw a lot of action I tell you),  with Yhancik talking about the preparations for The Gate, right through to my final piece of work on the gallery which was the construction of a new gallery building, have all combined to make it one of my most treasured memories of Second Life.

The new building would have looked fabulous btw.  I’ve not finished it, and like everything else I’ve started to build down the last few months, it is abandoned due to my skill limitations and my lack of interest in acquiring those skills.   Yet even now I’m impressed with how it would have looked.  C’est la vie.

So, what happens next? I just don’t know yet.  Watch this space I suppose.