The Companions We Keep

Many years ago I stepped into the home of neighbors. We were friendly but not close. In the entrance hung a large print of Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks. I probably saw it only once.

It never left me.

For years I assumed I simply liked the painting. Recently, after trying to remember its title, I realized something else had happened.

The painting had remembered me.

​At about the same time I first encountered Hopper, I also discovered Fernando Pessoa. Soon afterward came Pirandello, de Chirico, and other writers and artists whose work seemed strangely familiar. I admired them deeply but could never quite explain why.

Looking back now, I think they were all speaking the same language.

Not a language of certainty.

A language of searching.

For years I believed I was collecting books, paintings, and music. I thought I was discovering artists.

Now I think something quite different was happening.

I was discovering companions.

When I first stood before Hopper’s Nighthawks, I was searching for answers I could not yet put into words. Pessoa was asking questions about identity. Pirandello wondered who we become when we imagine becoming someone else. Hopper painted ordinary people whose inner lives remained hidden. Each seemed to be circling the same mystery.

Yet none of them tried to explain it.

Hopper never explained the loneliness in Nighthawks. He simply painted it.

Pessoa never resolved his contradictions. He lived among them.

Pirandello questioned identity without pretending it could be neatly defined.

None of them offered answers.

Instead, they quietly said,

“I’ve wandered through this country too.”

At the time, I didn’t realize how much I needed to hear that.

The years passed. Life changed. I traveled. I walked the streets of Lisbon where Pessoa had walked. I sat in cafés. I listened to jazz in Puerto Vallarta. I discovered Saramago, António Lobo Antunes, Andrés Neuman, Dante, and many others. Along the way I was fortunate to meet my dear friend Darrel, who became the first flesh-and-blood companion in this growing conversation. Like the writers I admired, he never tried to tell me what to think. He simply shared the joy of paying attention.

Looking back, I can see that Hopper, Pessoa, Darrel, and the others did not lead me out of loneliness. They did something gentler than that.

They walked beside me until I found my own way.

Today, when I stand before Nighthawks or open a book by Pessoa, I no longer see only the questions that first drew
me to them. I also see the companions they became. They met me where I was and remained with me as I changed.

Perhaps that is the greatest gift art can offer.

Not instruction.

Not certainty.

Companionship.

We do not all ask the same questions, nor do we encounter them at the same moments in our lives. Yet every so often
a painting, a novel, a piece of music, or an unexpected conversation stays with us long after we have forgotten where
​we first found it. Something in it recognizes us before we fully recognize ourselves.

It offers no explanation and makes no promises.

It simply keeps us company until we are ready to continue on our own.

Sometimes that is enough.

Not because it answers our questions, but because it reminds us that we do not have to ask them alone.

When I began writing these essays, I thought I was sharing memories of books, music, travel, and art.

Now I think I was doing something else.

I was introducing the companions who quietly shaped the way I came to see the world.

None of them handed me a map. They simply made the landscape less lonely.