I am an artist. A fact, for me, as concrete as my status as human. It's not a calling, exactly, its more like a condition. I didn't wake up one day and DECIDE to be an artist. There was definitely no choice involved, it's a compulsion that demands my attention, submission and frankly, most of my money. Art is like a burning itch inside and eventually you just have to scratch that shit, and sometimes... it hurts.
Being an artist is like living on a rollercoaster. Sometimes it's electric and you want to throw your hands up and howl in ecstasy. Other times you want to blow chunks because it's too much. As an artist you don't just have emotions, you are possessed by them. Art takes control of you like a parasite and after hours doing its labor-some bidding, you wonder if it will ever let go. The line between you and your art becomes blurred and the aparition it breeds becomes your life. In other words, sometimes shit gets real, and sometimes shit gets real weird.
To be an artist you must see things that aren't really there. Art is simply a hallucination you bring into reality. I hallucinate all the time. I see magnificent sculptures in piles of trash, ocean waves on completely white walls, entire cities in scraps of paper, and intricate mosaics in broken mirrors. I see things for their possibilities.
I see ugly and broken things and lacking the skills to fix them, I make them new. It gives me a sense of control and purpose in a world oppressively devoid of control and purpose.
I'll admit, it's exhausting being a vulnerable and constantly creating Art Beast, but I manage. Somehow, it's always worth it.
Even when the insane call to art drags me out of bed at 4 in the morning to write a song about farts. Even when I forget my moms birthday because I've been in my studio for days glueing marbles together. Even when I paint until my hand cramps into permanent shadow-puppet-dog formation. I don't care. I love it.
I love getting my hands dirty. I love how hard it is. I love laboring over something for hours, standing back when I'm done only to hate it so much I am forced to start over. I love every unreasonable second of it.
Why would anyone do this to themselves? I'm many years into that question, and still oceans away from a satisfying answer. The best I can scrape together is that it is occasionally satisfying.
The satisfaction comes in those rare moments of masterpiece. Sometimes it takes a thousand tries to get it almost right. There not one grain of satisfaction in almost. Then on onethousandandone, there it is... staring back at you, The Piece. You comb over it trying to find fault, but fail to yield one. Its done. Its perfect. And then it's a thousand more failures before you get that feeling again. Its absolute insanity. Or out-sanity, as in outside of sanity, peering in on you, pointing and laughing.
Everyone has their own brand of crazy and I guess this is mine. Art crazy. My grizzly cross to bear, my grizzly bear to cross. But, at the end of the day, it's mine and no one else's, unique to this tiny speck of eternity that I occupy. I guess that's something... and actually, I am profoundly grateful.
