All Comments on 'Tagging Hell's Gate'

YES !

Enjoyed it

~Spiny

Yes Anonymous, Yes! 5

What a nice surprise. I really wasn’t expecting this surprising splash of artistic inspiration through the eyes of a teenage girl. I’ve been a painter and art teacher for the better part of sixty years, and am semi retired because I lost all my students at the outset of COVID. This might jolt me into resuscitating those abandoned, half finished canvases! Thanks for your words.

Superb!

Strong stuff. Very good. 5*

I caught (sad to admit) most of the names, except Frie and Gus. I feel like I should have.

Wow, this is great. Thank you. Not only that, but I have to check out artists names and works now, since you dropped names I did not know.

Hey!

Thanks to all of you who took the time to read and comment on this--as I'm discovering, comments are the coin of the realm on here, and I immensely appreciate your thoughts, suggestions, and support!

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Shellycat1 and Kaeyo, if you want me to give you a list of the artists, please drop me a line! I thought about putting it in here, but I figure I should leave it for people to guess!

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JohnTCooksey: Thank you! This grew out of conversations my kid and I had during Covid, as we were walking around the park together. Writing it got me to get off my butt and return to some artistic endeavors of my own, and I'm honored to think that it might have a similar effect on a reader!

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@CatMother, ClearCreek, Spiny and Anonymous: Thank you for reading and for encouraging me to write more.

Thanks

The first half, incredible. The supernatural all-star training was ok. IMO Andy was the fraud/huckster of the bunch. But what do I know. 5*

Otis

i have no idea why that brought a tear to my eye but thax

I don't know what this is, but man it's good. Write on!

Have to agree with Chopinesque, as a non-artist with no expectations of ever becoming one. It's always interesting getting glimpses into other worlds, understanding that others will enter into this and appreciate every thought and nuance. It would have been nice, tho, to have heard more about Silla and Juan. They kinda got lost in 'art appreciation'.

Sometimes art is a painting, sometimes it's the movement a body creates as a dance, sometimes it's a 3 dimensional object, beautiful or grotesque ..and sometimes it's an idea put in another's mind!

Well done.

I now understand a little more of what I feel. Thanks for the five-star effort.

Music is the same way. Sometimes all you do is let the notes out of the instrument. Somedays you have to pull them out one by one.

Wow, thank you so much for your inspiring writing!

This is so, so good. That opening section. Wow. You roped me in by describing bridges. That takes some talent! Your descriptions were fantastic. Poetic, even. Those bridges felt alive. They had personality. I could picture them in my mind, even though I'd never seen them.

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Loved the details you chose to include. Two examples:

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"The moonlight glittered off the broken glass on the beach." What a wonderful, specific visual. It shows us through Silla's eyes what it feels like to suspended high above the ground on a bridge at night. I love it when I read a sentence that momentarily makes me feel like I AM the character.

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"It was like being stuck in a blender, or being that little metal ball on the bottom of a can of spray paint." A great example of how the use of simile should fit with the character who is using it. This is exactly how I would imagine Silla might describe the feeling.

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Then the transition to Silla's conversations with various artists. So many lovely words of wisdom. And then this hilarious line dropped casually among them the gems: "Don't drag your shirt sleeve through the paint."

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The story has so many memorable lines, but this was one of my favorites: "No, the art is something inside you. The painting is what's left after it travels down your fingers and off your brush."

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Just a gem of a story. So glad I took the time to read it. I hope that when the paint travels down your fingers and off your brush in the future, you'll see fit to share it with us.

Enjoyed it didn’t really understand it though.

This story is forever.

Damn good writing.