200 operas all at once: James Drinkwater

I am walking.

I am completely overcome.

I am outside of myself and I have this rising feeling from within me. It's the way we feel just before bursting into tears but just now, the tears won't quite arrive. This feeling has been with me from the day I arrived in Sevilla. It leaves me woozy with the desire to lay in the paintings I have since made on the floor of Divina pastora and this brings me to the realisation that paintings quite simply are the arrival of ourselves.

There are beds on the roof, faces in the pavement and we exchange jackets after the performance. I am drawing on placemats with lipstick at a restaurant where fat hangs over sherry barrels and if you are lucky you might be graced by the Chef's embrace who is grandmother to all. There is a house where a tiger prowls on the balcony, underneath this we ate things we could never dream of and as always there were stars on the door under his apartment because I soon learnt 'that you cannot do surgery on the shine of your eyes'.

The ideas I have around time are quickly dismantled and I give over completely to this timeless way where art and life are inseparable.

I am learning so much here, my heart is a receiver.

This city has opened my chest.

There is a newness in me now and this comes at a price.

For loading the heart with more than it should carry is something that I have made a habit of.

Yes I  am changed,

but in the sense that I am more myself now than I was before

and my gratitude is eternal.

So to my new family... I love you 

like 200 operas all at once.

James Drinkwater, 2026.