(NOTE: This is a raw journal entry. Some stones are unpolished.)
I brought chard to The Growing Experience (my CSA)
and met J-Dream-Worker who says he will read my blog. His schooling was in theater, and he’s
starting to return toward his artistic self.
So, he’s hungry for all kinds of input.
I’ve started owning my thinking and my writing as my art,
and I’m starting to own myself as an artist.
When you’re an artist you create because you have to. There’s not much choice involved. The pressure builds and stuff pours out.
Bangkok-Girl said something about my being an outside
artist, kind of like the guy
who built Watts Towers. He worked in
isolation and didn’t have the reward of public acclaim while he did his work. She said this in response to my complaint
that I’m getting tired of being insane: the feeling that I’m the only one who
understands or cares about what I create.
I’ve been feeling very disconsolate lately. Like, why bother? I mean, I even asked her if she read myDawkins vs. Collins essay, and she admitted she read only a third of it, and
then it seemed like a bunch of Matrix talk, so she skipped to the end.
Fuck it. I’m surrounded by idiots. And they’re all so busy embracing the
technology that is dumbing them down.
Assholes.
All this Facebook dreck where people post a picture and
think they’ve made a meaningful statement.
They don’t know what it means to craft a personal thought.
A picture is not worth a thousand words. A picture is the loss of a thousand
words because someone plucked it off the shelf instead of growing it in the
soil of her/his mind. Where’s the
effort? The creativity? The risk?
And, social networking tools perpetuate all this bullshit—pouring somebody
else’s work into your info-stream.
So, I’m a lonely outside artist. I guess I still have a responsibility to
bring my art to the world. That’s what
it means to be in the world and do your work.
Once you come to know and accept your responsibility, then you’ve passed
the point of no return. There is no
choice any more, no opportunity to agonize over should I or shouldn’t I.
You just know your work and do it. Damn it.
God, are you laughing again? I
thought so.
= = = = = = = =
I had a thought a couple of days ago. It’s a little hard to recapture. “You don’t yet know who you are.” As if to say that I am tip-toeing around my
purpose and my power and my use and my instrumentality.
And it makes me sad.
I feel so far away from the home I knew and the home I’m to make for
myself. Sad about all this work on my
path, and seeing that I’ve barely begun.
I ask you, God, how many times must I walk this way before I get it
right? How many times must I live this
life before I understand? How many times
around the track for my pitiful self to run into the conscious awareness of
what I’m actually doing here?
These are the questions every grain of sand asks.
From your lead in "don't read this if you are in a bad mood" I expected something sure to set me off. Instead I found your blog to be honest and thoughtful. Not everyone is an artist but have feelings/thoughts inside them and are so relieved when they see an image or hear a song that speaks for them, does it matter that they didn't create it? YOu on the other hand have ability and desire to create, I believe that the more you embrace that the closer you will get to "home".
ReplyDeleteThank you, M.E. This was more of an emotional entry than a carefully reasoned one. Unfortunately, I allowed myself to be insulting of others. You saw past some of my raw feelings and zeroed in on my struggle to embrace what I've been given.
DeleteThank you for filtering for good, and thank you for daring to read my blog!