our appreciation of art (or lack thereof).

this chair is uncomfortable and it’s so muggy i can’t breathe.

my beer too flat to taste good and too weak to feel good.

the cigarettes take the edge off of these thoughts a little

but dull knives still cut, and anxiety is always cheaper than cigarettes.

this is the first time i’ve put this much effort and honesty into writing about something important to me without it being a response to something depressing or fucked up happening to me.

this time, it’s a different kind of sad.

(is what i am telling myself at least, hah)

it’s subtle; mostly just a lonely disappointment in myself. no more, no less.

mahler drags me into himself

i close my eyes and die for a while;

cease existing, cease thinking,

crescendos and joy are all that exist.

bach educates without you even realizing it

you forget about everything else as you listen;

how can you not?

counterpoint so elegant and complex

each time you hear a particular song may as well be a new composition

but the same perfection is always there.

chopin just makes me feel.

overwhelmed with beauty, horror, tension?

i have no idea if i am even happy or sad at times.

but especially the rare moments in his pieces

the ones when you hear, and can almost feel, the anger in his dissonance

i’m shaking, i’m smiling, i’m crying

i’m dying once more yet really living for the first time.

bits of rapture and fleeting emotions;

humanity at both it’s best and worst.

and each one allows me to lose myself again.

i lose myself in their passion, their convictions,

i lose myself exactly as they want me to.

and it is no less wonderful; the same escape i crave.

even amateur authors have these moments of genius

prose posts, local rock shows, college zines,

even the scribbled sharpie of someone who, for no apparent reason,

ended up leaving fragments of their soul

all on the same bathroom walls where

“call 555-FUCK for a good time”

is commonly the highest quality of work,

because art is different.

art exists when and where it wants to.

hell, not even the artist has any say about that.

art is the science of beauty.

art is beauty, period.

and art is my addiction

one that can’t be replaced by any others;

and i have tried, believe me.

art is also the greatest irony in my life.

when people ask what i want to do

i say “i don’t know” or make up a quick lie and say

be an astronaut, maybe a doctor,

anything pragmatic or expected.

anything normal.

but i fucking hate normal.

i don’t want to live my days empty.

i don’t want to be kept awake at night by that same empty.

i don’t want to die with this hole in me.

i don’t want to be a part of that lie anymore.

i don’t want my entire life to be neat and tidy.

my existence amounting to some generic paragraph;

an obituary in some newspaper i’ve never heard of before.

i don’t want a stranger to know me better than i ever knew myself.

i know what i want out of my life,

i want to make beautiful things with these hands of mine.

i don’t care about fame or fortune or some fucking award to validate my existence.

i only care about selfish things.

i only care that i alone made that beautiful fucking thing.

my work is the reason it is beautiful,

and without me it wouldn’t even exist.

i don’t even care what it is

a violin solo that makes your emotions throb uncomfortably

a poignant line; breaking you just as hard hearing it

as it broke me to compose it.

a pain that hurts oh so well.

maybe a poem stained

with the parts of my personality, the blood and guts of emotion

with cheap smudges from my home inkjet printer

with tears from you feeling what i feel,

a reality

a connection

an affair

that can only exist in that connection between author and reader

so i try.

i try until my hands bleed.

i try until my wallet is as empty as the bottle next to me.

i try and try and try until.

because i am still trying, and that won’t change.

i learn words upon words;

enough to write a thesaurus,

but not enough to write.

in fact, the more i learned

the more i tried to better myself

the worse i felt.

here’s a joke with me as the punchline:

the only thing that bigger words actually made expanded?

the hole i’ve been trying to fill this entire time.

the elucidation of realizing I now write shittier.

a didactic education about learning nothing in the end.

the dichotomy between who i want to be and what i actually am.

synonyms, antonyms, homonyms, just pride in sin.

so i taught myself music theory

chords, counterpoint rules, cadences.

suspensions, tritones, and of course how A4=440Hz.

submitting myself to dominant 7th’s

pretending to be a major composer.

but leaving out the “failure of a”

which was the only part of it that had any truth at all.

five words of truth is what i got

three extra!

even though i only wanted two.

i did get the “truth” part free there as well.

i can’t be sad really.

it’s not like i deserve to be special.

no one deserves anything they haven’t earned.

so i am doing my best to convince myself

it’s just a bit of disappointment.

a lot of people can’t effortlessly create

perfection out of a pen and some paper

the music of mediocrity

the prose of pretending

the story-lines of the shallow

the work of wasting time

a completed caricature of complete crap.

but even from these dead, empty, flat pieces of trash

i did learn that flats mean something important

flats you see, are what make major chords

into minor achievements, and as you add more flats

they finally evolve into diminished people such as i;

rationalizing insanity our only way to keep any sort of sanity at all.

sins are subjective

so maybe if i pretend hard enough to be a poet

if i exaggerate just the right amount of my empty words

i can turn my mediocrity into magnificence!

into something that for once

lets me feel satisfied

something that for once

saves me from that nostalgic sickness

when you surrender to shame.

so keep writing

keep singing

keep composing

keep rapping

keep humming, laughing, dancing, drawing,

painting, acting, sculpting, building, programming,

and any and everything else i forgot.

keep fucking.

keep fighting.

and fuck everyone who tell you otherwise.

that’s what it means to be an artist.

i may not make beautiful shit right now.

but fuck yeah i will keep trying until i die.

i may spend my whole life failing to make beauty

but then i have spent it chasing something important to me.

a person who is passionate enough about something

to spend his entire life chasing that motherfucker

what the fuck can be more beautiful than that?

because remember;

art is beauty, after all.