I spent the midday afternoon at a friend’s art studio, the workshop building situated in the closed-off but simultaneously sprawling landscape of a working industrial neighborhood.
The sun blazed in through the studio’s wall-spanning windows, melancholically making its way across the room, never not shining as the windows faced west and the horizon was open for the sun to set deeply into. This was a closing-in-on-spring tranquil mid-afternoon, as if it were just us in the whole neighborhood. The only sounds were us talking across those few hours and the sun’s light, as if I could hear it washing over us and everything. The light felt harsh on us at times but I knew the feeling it was leaving in me.
We talk about what it’s like to not know how to live without committing ourselves to art. We talk about living that experience in the face of a two-faced capitalist world that wants to suck us dry of our art then deflate our humanity as non-contributing members of society. We talk about how if art was regarded with the same made-up league of capitalist meritocracy as say software engineering, then artists like her and I who work disproportionately harder than most cogs would be wiping our asses with money. To be honest I don’t know how much of this was just me ranting, but anyway.
In the face of all that along with the personal alienation from those we thought would stay but ultimately leave, be it for our life choices, or the projections they judge onto us, or whatever excuses they could come up with to feel less guilty about us not being “good enough” for them – she asks me if it feels hard to continue committing to art.
On the train back from Toronto, freshly heartless (again people don’t congratulate me half of y’all read it wrong) – my two-year-dirge of being creatively dry as raisin bran breaks at the touch of ink on my notebook. Made-up terms without description. Groups of words with no greater direction. Creativity still. The most primary action of letters transferring from spirit to pen. Equivalent to expressive defibrillation of my hands.
Within the same defibrillative movement but with pseudo-poetic pace, my arms raise towards the sky to strangle Art God down from the clouds and demand of him other than why he’s so clichéd:
“You bastard – is this what you want from me?”
Is this what I’m actually expected to do forever?
And if it’s forever, am I supposed to suffer for it like this again and again until I’m dead?
Humour me here, dear hypothetical less-satirically-self-serious-if-not-downright-emotionally-unavailable haplessly-stumbled-here-reader.
I came the one closest time I ever did to entertaining a life of well-adjustedness. But since having my heart fuckin ripped out is as good a sign as any that That is Not what Art God had in mind for me, I believe I also have the right to question stupid-ass Art God.
I’ve gone through my whole life of self-actualization up til now making brooding art as a pushback against the feeling of never being truly seen and accepted. Even amongst rejects, I make them feel like in-crowds, and even amongst rejects who feel like other rejects are in-crowds, I make those 2nd degree rejects feel like they got each other at least. And now that I’ve spent all my reject life-savings, reject-total of human bonds, and reject-rounded-resources and reject-collected-creed on my magnum opus, does Art God actually expect me to do it all over again with nothing left?
I think I’ve at least earned the right to stick my hand out of the water and ask for something to help pull me out this time.
And not expect the same outcome as always.
And so I’ve spent the last few months asking for the signs from whoever closest to me—personally or vicinity-wise—what the Hell point there is to scrape from all this.
The same consistently maddening answer from those who showed up—
That I need to continue making art – no matter what.
Damn god it.
Does it feel hard to continue committing to?
The choice is easy. The cost is excruciating.
But I somehow – s o m e h o o w w – still believe nothing could be more worthwhile to pay the price.
Most people spend their whole lives subjugating themselves to misery as drones feeding a machine just so they can live in minimal shame from society’s gaze and feel like they are of use.
But when an infantile handful of oligarchs and tyrants can assume total rule over that system, it shows more than ever how non-existently the machine cares about its innumerable cogs, and will at any point eat them up and spit them out.
I watch the melting snow wash over and realize a silver lining of cartoon cataclysmic emotional trauma is that this was the fastest winter ever.
And if we ever reach a utopic future where everything has been crashed to zero, when capitalism has lost all power, and hundred-dollar bills are used by the now-powerless oligarchs and tyrants to wipe their asses, everyone will be equal class.
Except the artists will have been here the whole time already doing what’s mattered most; the only thing that’s mattered after the universal requirement of “don’t be an asshole”.
Creating will always be worth the cost. I’ve paid with everything that I otherwise might’ve had if I didn’t create. But it’s not like all of that – the people or places – would’ve stayed for me.
So I continue making art, no matter what.
OPEN DOOM CRESCENDO 