So What?

I don't recommend being 40 and trying to change the face of art and society while living at your mom's place.

When you're 36, or even 39, it's manageable, even cute or adventurous, or doable at least.

But when you turn the corner, there's nothing but you and it.

You and it.

You and it.

The biggest part of the equation, like with anything, is belief.

An artist who doesn't believe doesn't have shit.

My whole life the question that has loomed large has been this:

Am I who I am and what I believe when everything is goinng swell..

Or am I who I am when things are just going--or even going poorly?

When things are going well--which is more often than not--it's all just a matter of time and obsticles are just speed bumps.

To make sure that you're paying attention and not skipping over the present to get to the future.

But I've been doing this for ten years with no measurable reward in the material sphere. I don't even have a sense any longer that there's anything for me to go back to, so that's not really an option.

So what is there?

Let me put it like this.

When I started I thought just doing the actions was enough.

Write the book, paint the paintings, throw out the bad stuff, learn your craft.

Do the work.

Go take the cover photo, buy the expensive paints instead of the student ones, turn right instead of going left cause you felt like it.

That got me a book thta I felt (and still feel) was better than anything out there.

Because everything else out there, that wasn't superficial, was just mopey shit.

At least mine swung for the fences.

At least it tried, and was honest and real.

At least it burned in your hands.

All these fucking career authors are all doing something clever and edit-y about words.

Who's got time for that?

Plus none of their characters are half as smart/neurotic/fucked up/brilliant/genius. enlightened as they are.

So they're shirting the form of literature itself.

All these characters are trapped inside a book with a fucked up ending and the writer is making due, even got lucky a few times and was able to afford a Brooklyn loft.

And now he has to write another mopey book, causee that's what the gatekeepers think is real.

Fuckheads. (AAnd I mean th egatekeepers too.)

Plus--all of em afraid of mistakes and that's where half the glory is.

Fuckheads.

After the book, whatever voice that I decide to listen to in myself said, fine--go paint.

And move the fuck out of here (Seattle).

Actually it said them in the opposite order and much more slowly. You can tell the voice is loving by how fucking quiet and annoyingly relaxed it is. Gentle fucking bitch--shit, half the time I just want the news. But then there's all this drama around drawing it out, studying dreams, looking for inclinations, etc.

Sometimes it's nice, but whatever.

So I did it.

And told everyone who now thought of me as a writer--including myself--that I was painting.

ANd I painted.

And I tried to sell the things.

And some of them were good and some mediocre.

And some of them were transcendental--beyond anything I thought I could or would ever create.

[Just for reference, if I can say it without bragging, in my studio art classes in college, my prof., who was a 5o something working painter himself--told me alone that I had it--had the hands--whatever. He didn't say that to any of the art majors, or the photo-realist and suprisingly accurate technicians. Just stumbling along History major me. And half my paintings from that time are total junk--one was good and still is. The rest found the dumpster. And I only mention this to say it wasn't as if I didn't think I could paint and was pleasantly surprised a couple of time. It was more like I was supposed to be good but didn't really feel like dealing with it and finally figured out how to tap into something real. (What I do to paint, by the way, anyone could do—it requires no brush skill or "artistic" talent at all—besides an eye and preferences. I can draw too, but this wasn't about that either-it wasnt that I finally figured out how to make hands and feet look decent. I say this only to note that if quality was the deciding factor, I feel like at least some of my paintings would have found homes with all that I see going on in the art world around me and alll of the people I talked to.

I felt that about my book as well, which garnered a decent quantity of rejections.]

But I digress.

My point was that while I was painting, like a quantum scientist and a whole bunch of new agers, I came to believe that how I felt or what I thought had a significant impact on how I was received, etc.

Which led to a quantity of new age self-censorship (crush the negative) but also a new level of self-responsibility. Being responsible for my feelings.

Oh, and by the way, I pushed both my book and paintings after completing them. Got some nibbles from established players that immediately and always went cold.

In many respects it was identical to the job search I endured for four or five years in both Seattle and Chicago--where I couldn't even get a job waiting tables. (And yes I did have experience.)

Or leasing apartments, or doing graphic design (well, I got a little work doing that), or just aobut anything else.

It was as if I had somehow built some sort of failure force-field around me.

For a number of years, I was determined to see the positive in even this. That was the whole test, I was sure—if I can go through complete nothingness with even a smile, then surely I could run the business and take the kind of risks I wanted to take in life once things started popping.

Now?

Now two things.

A) I'm not so sure.

And b) I'm not sure it matters.

If love is conditional, then it's conditional — and fighting against it is what we should be doing.

If it's unconditional, then it really doesn't matter.

And none of your thoughts are being judged, nor actions being analyzed.

I still don't expect peanut butter to put itself on my bread (I don't eat either, but you get the point), but I'm not of the mind that it will feed me better if I do it in the right mind set.

If everything is allowed and nothing is punished, then everything is allowed and nothing punished.

If love is unconditional, then there is no karma, no retribution, no teaching, no learning, no nothing.

Well there may be learning--but why then would we be made (or make ourselves) stupid in the first place? Why would there be a fall at all? Why would god say to Adam and Eve don't eat the apple?

Why wouldn't they be able to eat the damn thing?

Why wouldn't they be able to eat anything for that matter?

Why would it be bad for white people to be uptight editors? Men to be assholes?

Why would ANYTHING be preferable to anything else?

Why would eating pure sugar be any different than eating broccoli?

Why would we be the fuck here at all?

So nothing exists but love.

So what?

How does knowing that evertyhign is love leave us any better off?

Why bother?

So the world is a constantly expanding, growing place that is essentially bountiful.

So what?

So we can do what we want every day and make our greatest dreams come true.

So what?

Why do we even have dreams in the first place?

Why do we even think we're separate from the thing we're not separate from in the first place?

Why isn't this just a big fucking circle jerk?

And don't answer, just buy my book.

Just have the guts to do what you want.

Just go for fucking broke.

It's taken me $75K and ten years living hand to mouth to get here.

Just send money.

And I know that it may be all me. And I take responsibility for even how bitchy and self-serving and childish this post may sound.

But my question remains:

So what?