Of all human powers, one power remains the strongest. That power is the mind. A single mind is not only capable of operating the body that holds it physically, but it can also enable certain functions in other bodies and minds. Something that sprang from one single mind centuries ago is able to energise and move a seemingly endless amount of spirits or grasp a similar amount of bodies and fold them to the will of that ancient mind.

Like all humans, Sol was aware of the mind’s power on at least a superficial level. Even more so than other people. He admired and sought the power the mind can yield. He worked as a curator in the museum of fine arts. Sometimes, when the visitors had left and the hour was late, he would stand still before a portrait or a landscape and he would feel the pride, the kindness, and the painted sun upon his face. It gave him strength. He lived on these powers, because he had little of them himself.

He had seen people with power. These people walked the streets in fashionable suits, travelled the world to distant places, and did things Sol only dreamed of. Dreaming was all he did. Whenever he woke up from those dreams and felt his powerless life, he found himself unable to rise. On the evenings that followed he would indulge in paintings, music and books, created by powerful minds. It gave him the strength to at least imagine.

A man woke up and had a dream. He dreamed his name was Sol. He dreamed his house was filled with paintings. He dreamed of music in another room and much more. A voice in that strange room spoke words in a strange tongue.
Sol woke up, dreamed no more. He remembered dreams and sounds. They resonated slowly through his mind as he unwillingly started his day. He drank coffee and looked at the portrait of a woman. It was a fine reproduction of a work by Claude Monet and showed a woman in a sunbathing field of flowers. The warm frozen light gave Sol the strength to allow himself some optimism.

Sol lived in a relatively small three store building where he rented an apartment with two rooms and a bathroom on the third floor. The landlord was a rather obnoxious old man he only spoke to on two occasions. When the rent had to be paid, the landlord knocked on Sol’s door. When Sol wanted to complain about the people in the apartment beneath him, as they were rude people who would never listen to Sol when he would complain about their noisemaking directly, Sol knocked on the landlord’s door. Both these occasions made him uncomfortable. The building was old and often filthy. One thing pleased him though. He was the only tenant on the third floor. The room on the north side of the building was used as a storage room by those noisy people. The other room was always locked, silent and empty.

Sol opened his door and walked past the storage room towards the cranky old elevator. A cold stale draft floated past him. It was the air of rooms that had not been opened for ages. It reminded him briefly of tombs in which ancient treasures were found. Slowly he turned around to see the door at the far end of the hallway ajar.
When a man wakes up, he will forget the dream. He will remember his name and some more.

No man is able to write down his own name in a dream. Hand-eye coordination prevents this, since there is no pen in his hand and the eyes are closed. The vision does not originate from the eyes at all; it is caused and experienced through the brain. Consequently, Sol did not dream when he wrote down his name. He was very happy with that one certainty. The contract he had signed was something he had been dreaming of. In exchange for a part of his salary, he would borrow a certain painting. It would be a real one, instead of a reproduction. The painting of Pygmalion and Galeta by Jean-Leon Gerome would hang on the southern wall. Sol did not think of his reduced salary. He remembered the majestic image.

In his twilight atelier the artist Pygmalion embraces the pale perfect statue. In the light of that embrace, the marble gains a subtle colour of flesh. Galeta lives. A cupid aims his golden arrow.

Saturday, tomorrow, in the morning, security personnel would bring the expensive masterwork to his apartment. During that Friday, Sol worked with great pleasure. The sheer prospect of having a real masterwork in his possession gave him certain strength. Anticipation kept flowing through him while he walked through the dark streets towards his home. He even managed to whistle a simple tune. With determined light steps he whistled “Fur Elise” and waited in the elevator.
The door next to the elevator exit opened and a man walked past Sol with a brand new television set in his arms. Sol would have completely ignored it, were it not that he noticed something quite disturbing. The television seemed operational and displayed an empty room, as if filmed through a security camera. At first, he thought it was his own room. It was very similar, except that sheets were draped over the scarce furniture.
”What are you looking at? Mind your own business!”
Sol looked up at his neighbour and down again to the empty screen. He walked on with his key in his hand. Instead of opening his door, he reconsidered.
The room he had seen in the glimpse was indeed not his own. Sol took a step to the left and took a deep breath. His hands knocked on the door like in a dream.
An impossible draft made him feel cold and awkward.
”What are you doing?” The landlord was standing in front of the storage room with the downstairs neighbour.
”I thought…” Sol stammered.
”Nobody lives there.” The landlord said.
”Mind your own business,” added the neighbour.

Sol heard a door slam shut behind him. He turned around and back. “Did you see that?” he wanted to say, but the two men where already in the storage room.
After he locked his door behind him, Sol sat and looked at the blank south wall, where he would hang the painting. Other thoughts crossed his mind as well. He knew that his neighbour’s business was not legal and that the landlord was helping them. If the landlord went to jail, Sol would be forced to find other housing. More and more, Sol also began to think of the strange things he saw and felt. He did not at all consider the possibility that he had lost his mind, or at least he was not afraid of it. He saw the phenomena as pieces of a puzzle, an intriguing rational clockwork which he heard and saw if he would open an antique clock. He grew curious of the working and meaning of this clockwork. Before he went to sleep, he decided to ask other tenants of the building whether they knew anything about the south room. The only other tenant who Sol did not despise was an elderly woman named Rose. She had invited him for tea several times.
A lot of dreams, thoughts and decisions begin with curiosity. A lot of things end the same way. Sol dreamt of the empty room and the things that might or might not exist in an empty room. He woke up and fell asleep again.

Curiosity enables our brain. A man thinks, therefore he dreams. He would dream expectations, curious of what would happen. They could bring the painting, wake him up with their knocking. The painting would be perfect on the south wall. He would almost be able to touch it, curious how the canvas would feel. It would not be something he should do and the painting would pulverize. Behind it, he woke up.
Sol did wake up this time, slightly disturbed. He had heard a distant knocking and the angry voice of his landlord. It was his only way of having a conversation. Sol heard his name.

”He does not live there. Nobody does.” The landlord banged on Sol’s door now.
”Open up! Some folks from some museum want to speak to you!”
Sol dressed quickly and hurried to open the door. His eyes still felt dry from sleeping and a dream turned around in his head.
The museum’s security personnel greeted him and asked him to come along. In the elevator, they asked him several questions about locks on his door and windows. He had already taken all the necessary precautions. A third man stood leaning against a white van.
In the back of that van stood a tall white package. Two men carefully placed it in the elevator. While the elevator crept up less then silent, the third man asked Sol to sign a form. The address on the form was wrong. That was the reason why they had knocked on the wrong door. It was changed, with a short note and another autograph. That concluded the transfer. It had made Sol quite uncomfortable and he longed to shut the door and admire the painting. So he sat in front of it, in a comfortable armchair. The painting of Pygmalion and Galeta hanging on the south wall of his room was a strange dream to Sol.

Dreams are subject to change, much like the light changes an object during the passing of the day. The light of the mind turns around, thoughts dawn and dusk. It reveals new secrets and new sources to contemplate.
Woke up, being a cloud. Considered in shapes and made of rain. The cloud drifted in front of the sun and became a diaphragm, aiming the light into Sol’s locked room. The light passed over the painting, illuminating the background.
The figures in the background cowered when exposed to the light of consideration. They were faces of despair. It felt inappropriate for the end of loneliness.
Sol stared at the painting for a night and a day. It filled his world and his mind with the happiness of the lovers and the despair of the statues. It filled him with power. He fell asleep in his armchair. He dreamed of music. The deep soothing tones of a cello resonated in the aether of his imagination, until that too faded away.
Nobody went to sleep in the other room. The music and the dreams had been forged in loneliness.

Sol woke up with a dream that continued during the day. The dream made him smile. He talked to people, confident about his thoughts. In the evening he debated with determination with the landlord. After that debate, the old man allowed him to use the empty room, as long as Sol didn’t move anything nor invited anyone.
It had been empty ever since the landlord’s daughter committed suicide in the room, years ago. That was what Rose, the elderly woman told him. She remembered the girl faintly. She used to dream of playing cello with the national orchestra. She used to sit in her room practising day and night, but her father refused to allow her to study at the conservatorium. The walls of the room were brown; the furniture was covered in grey dusty sheets. The only thing uncovered was a small simple desk and a simple chair. They stood against the north wall underneath a framed poster.
Rose pointed it out to Sol, saying: “What a remarkable image.”
Sol agreed as he felt the cold of the room entering his heart. “It is by Jean-Leon Gerome. He made two paintings of this scene. From the front and the back. The artist Pygmalion and the statue of Galeta, which comes to life to be his love.”
”What a lovely story,” Rose smiled. “Would you like some tea?”
Politely, Sol refused, claiming that he had things that had to be done.

The old woman left with a smile. Sol sat down at the desk, holding a pen, looking down at the blank paper. He began to write, his dream would come true, like the story in his mind.
The painting of Pygmalion and Galeta, completed through the wall of the apartment, became a window.
A man named Sol looked up and peered deep into the past. A girl, forgotten and nameless, looked back at him and whispered while Sol wrote down the dream.
A girl played cello in an empty room, weaving a fantasy denied to her. The music went unheard. Nobody came to her. She died and nobody came to live in the room. The power of her musical dream remained and had filled the man in need of the strength of her mind.
Sol lived the dream that was carved into the room.