Honestly, I was thinking on how to start it for a while. While that particular small little passage I wrote for an introduction actually came to me in a flash in the middle of the day. It's honestly probably the first new story like thing to come from my head in a number of years. So while not a large introduction It was at the very least something more than me just rehashing my old ideas. And on a time note, although the emotion, idea, inspiration may have been with me for hours days even the actual poem always came to me in a flash. I had to write it down as quickly as it came to me or I was liable to forget a line. I've spent many years where the only thing close to creative writing has been reviews that I doubt many found even remotely interesting.
So while short I did enjoy writing it, and while the writing of it took only a few minutes. I spent more time thinking on how to start it, but coming up with complete blanks. Introductions are a very very hard thing, much like saying hello to a stranger my every instinct tells me to run. I set the setting for the events, introduced the main actor, and isn't that all that can truly be obtained by an introduction. Without leaving the gaps in their personality we become able to predict all their actions for the rest of the story. Without it we are left with but a taste of them a small fragment of them whether it is even the real them or just a shadow they present to mask the real them can only be obtained through further study of the person.
When a colleague or friend forces you into greeting another person, do you speak volumes before you say hello my name is so and so? Does your friend tell them a chapters worth on your prior to giving them a what is considered a proper introduction to you.
Also, while short you may have missed a small clue that spoke more about the character than was simply let on.
Captain, as in Captain my Captain a poem by Walt Whitman where it begins with a note that every prize it sought was found.
Arthur in this case the search for art or maybe a tie to King Arthur and his quest for the holy grail.
Gabriel as in Dante Gabriel Rossetti a Pre-Raphaelite poet and painter who if you have read his poetry or his paintings much is about the loss of his wife and child and that to some degree it was he at fault for having looked away from them. His wife died of a broken heart after the loss of there child, where was he when she fell into such a state of despair. Running from the pain in an entirely different way via brothels and booze to keep the feelings at bay. Only after her death did it all come crashing in. At the very least that is what I can see from his poetry of women and love and loss. This in itself points to the possibility that maybe a driving aspect of the man is that he is both driven here for what it has but is also running from what he has lost.
and finally the last name, Alighieri as in Dante Alighieri. The man who walked through limbo, then hell, through purgatory and finally through heaven in his Divine Comedy. A journey of the soul and spirit and will of a man the profoundly changes him the farther along he goes.
So while it only took me a few minutes to write these two short paragraphs, is it not in the subtext of what wasn't said that tells more of both the introduction of this character and their essence as well as foretells the true journey that leads ahead. One might go so far as to say it was a sort of puzzle that while on the surface seemed completely straight forward but it was the subtlety of it all that was more 2. Complicated.
Although as with all art in any form no matter how short or elaborate it's beauty or true meaning may be lost on the viewer. Was a caveman's paintings with stick men not just stories about hunts not also a form of art in both the visual and earliest for of textual media. One would probably not consider them great works of art now, and maybe not even then but even if no one does, was the painter on the stone still not telling a story for others to both know and remember. Remember what is seen by one's own eye isn't always all that is there to be told, and underneath it all a much greater story might be waiting to unfold.
