RebelStory / Manifesto
Every story has
its beginning.
The story of Romeo and Juliet — in the midst of chaos and strife, despite circumstance, with the odds stacked against them, their love bloomed. It speaks in whispers, but it carries the will and strength of the heart. This is what it inspired.
A wall on
Montague Street.
Rebel Romeo started in Worthing as spray-painted words to a lost love, on a small unassuming section of wall opposite the Rose & Crown — Montague Street, “Montague”, just like the surname of the famous Shakespearean character.
I wrote the words for her. But rather than post them in a letter, I thought it would make more sense to spray-paint them on the walls of Worthing and digitally on social media. Yes — totally makes sense, I know…
Before this rather unusual behaviour could begin, I needed a name, an alias to stand behind the words. Considering the nature of graffitied words of love on public walls, the name #RebelRomeo was aptly chosen.
The wordsmith years.
2016 — 2018.
The @wordsmith.a.r account began in December 2016 as a kind of personal diary open to strangers. It was raw, unfiltered, sometimes messy. Confessional lines, emotions, desires — posted almost daily, often intimate couplets about love, loss, and everything in between.
I didn’t write for an audience; I wrote because I needed to. A wound open to the world, hidden only by the anonymity of the internet. I would write this way almost every day for just under two years.
These posts were fragments of things I never said — moments I needed to let go of.
The archive — selected fragments
An archive of
unsaid things.
Memories of a perfectly imperfect love. These are the words that remain — exactly as they were posted, typos, bruises and all.
12 Dec 2016 — “A wish” · the seed of Reflections in the RainI could see her pain and I felt her pain. So I wished her to be happy just so I could feel that too.
18 Dec 2016 — “Bad”She was the kind of bad you’d take a bullet for.
8 Jan 2017 — “🌼 and the rain” · became She Did Not KnowShe did not know that the sky loved her so, for when it rained, it rained for her.
3 Feb 2017 — “Icarus and the sun”She was the sun, and I would give up my wings to be close to her, even if only for a moment.
11 Feb 2017 — “An infinity”An infinity created so that within it I could meet you.
17 Feb 2017I lied to myself when I thought I could forget you…
8 Mar 2017 — “Forever without me”I heard your heart hurting so I rushed to help. In my haste I handed you my heart, and as you held it, I watched it spring to life. This heart now alive longed to stay with you, and so it did — forever as your trophy, forever without me.
8 Apr 2017 — “Father”I’ll tell you I love you just like I’ve always done, but this time is different — this time is goodbye. You’ll never be alone, for when you leave me my heart will leave with you…
9 May 2017 — “My heart”My heart still remembers the sound of your name. But to love you is to leave you — anything less would be selfish, anything else would not be love…
10 Jun 2017 — “Hopeless strangers”Truth is I’m tired and a little restless. People come and go, that’s life I know… But that doesn’t change that I’m the fool that writes about a girl that has long gone, hopelessly left as strangers…
9 Jul 2017 — “Kiss me when it rains”Kiss me when it rains — the love that holds to my life when all I see are grey skies. My skies are dark, so don’t say a word. Just kiss me when the time is right, kiss me when it rains…
25 Jul 2017 — “Search for her” · became Never SettleNever settle. Find love that is wild, sets your soul on fire, a love like nothing you’ve ever felt before… And when you do, be brave and follow your heart.
11 Nov 2017 — “Bésame ahora o nunca”Don’t wait — kiss me now or never. Today is all we have, and tomorrow may never come…
26 May 2018 — “When I fall”Wouldn’t it be nice if for once, when you fall for someone, they fall for you just as hard, and all at the same time…
The full archive — 326 posts, 2016 to today — lives at @wordsmith.a.r. If you’re curious and don’t mind reading some terrible poetry. (His words, not ours.)
Spring 2017 —
the words leave the screen.
By spring 2017, those quiet digital words took on a louder form. Armed with a new pseudonym, I selected posts from the page to become stencilled artworks placed around Worthing — painting my feelings and thoughts in locations she might see them. Read the words, feel the words and, in a romantic twist, never realise they were for her.
The physicality of it — cutting stencils, spray-painting in the early hours while the town was still — let me reclaim a sense of movement even as my body was beginning to limit me in other ways.
What started as a deeply personal act became something more. People began to find the work, photograph it, and share it under #rebelromeo. An anonymous heartbreak had become a public art trail.
April 9th, 2017.
My father.
He had been bed-bound for years following a stroke. Like me, he had muscular dystrophy — it was from him that I inherited it. Though I had always been close to him, I felt helpless as I watched his condition worsen.
On April 9th, 2017, my father passed away. His loss broke me in a way I still struggle to describe. Grief blurred into regret. I drowned myself in distractions — working long hours, writing constantly, clinging to the past while avoiding the future.
He was the one who first introduced me to the poem Desiderata: “Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and ignorant; they too have their story.” With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.
In hindsight I was the source of all my pain, and romantic escapism was my choice of painkiller.From “About Rebel Romeo”
Steel, shipping labels
and a changing body.
I spent years as a machinist in the steel industry — long 12-hour shifts, physically demanding work. I’d take the large shipping labels meant for steel orders and fill them with ideas, words, sketches, poetry, whenever I had a moment to breathe. I’d come home with my thoughts scribbled on labels shoved into oversized work trousers.
I had been active all my life — cycling, badminton, martial arts. By 2012 I knew something was wrong: I was tiring too quickly, my calves giving out. The diagnosis was late adult-onset muscular dystrophy. At first I tried to ignore it; over time, my body made the decision for me. A large part of my identity — the physical, active part — was taken from me.
As my health changed, so did my art: digital illustration, large-scale mixed media, experimental textures, materials borrowed from construction. Creativity stopped being just an outlet. It became my way of adapting — of continuing to express myself when my body no longer allowed me to in other ways.
Who I was, who I am,
who I am still becoming.
In the end this all became an exercise of self-therapy through expression, rather than a means to any end. I knew that whatever path I took I would carry regret somewhere, so throwing myself into this alternate character — this made-up alter ego — became my coping mechanism.
Rebel Romeo is now an expression of the beauty I find in the world, through digital art and written words — and a continuation of my growth as a person. Today the work is an evolving fusion of past and present: drawing, writing, street art, digital media and tactile mixed-media pieces.
This website is an archive of those expressions, those thoughts — who I was, who I am, and the absolute madness of being alive.
The manifesto — “A Rebel for Love”, March 2017
A Rebel for Love
Where art thou, Rebel Romeo?
One who steals the heart of his enemy,
breaking all the rules in the name of love.
Rise up in rebellion,
loving in the face of indifference,
reckless in desire and fierce of spirit.
Become a rebel for love.
Don’t follow the crowd. Never be bullied into doing what
everyone else is doing.
Be a rebel — and stay true to yourself.
Yours sincerely,
A.J.R 🌹🗡