Not easily distracted, that one. Even with the sudden approach of a stranger, he remained cool and focused, eyes trained on<i>Trichotomy </i>as though nothing could bother him. In his way, Mikkel could respect that - or at the very least, relate to it. It took considerable effort to break his concentration, something he had prided himself on as a youth and even more so in his adulthood as a surgeon. What was more, if one could be so easily distracted from one's train of thought, how complex could those thoughts actually be?<br/><br/>Rather than simply nod and utter vague agreement at his choice of words, the young man challenged him with a few more of his own. Indeed, the lovely youth had more than a few passing thoughts on the piece, a few of which laid before Mikkel, bare. Fragments of the observer's soul. Despite himself, he couldn't help wondering if he had only reached the tip of this man's delightfully insightful, if standoffish iceberg.<br/><br/>Asked if his appreciation for the piece was genuine, Mikkel dipped his head in a low chuckle. "Oh, a little," he affirmed. "I had, some ages ago, made the acquaintance of the painter. Apparently before he painted<i>Trichotomy</i>, he had spiraled into heroin abuse and, while under the influence, began to believe that the drug allowed him to see the true nature of things." So said, he peered up once more, this time to regard the work, rather than the stranger standing one pace away.<br/><br/>"This, I can only surmise, is how he began to see man," he elaborated, eyes flitting between the three scrambled faces on the canvas. "Living in a state of eternal flux, torn between the faces we show the world, until finally we self-destruct in sprays of red from every orifice. Death is inevitable. Everything dies. But in my experience, man is the only creature in all of creation so burdened by the weight of his own existence and the inevitability of his own death that he is not content, but nonetheless resigned to tear himself in three." He gestured broadly - illustratively - at the work.<br/><br/>The surgeon fell into a state of reflective silence for a few long moments before, with the barest hint of a smile, shifting his weight and peering in the stranger's direction a second time. "A bit bleak, I suppose, now that I've said it out loud. You must find me positively ghoulish."