reach
I don’t care about “art” or “artists” or the business of “artistry”. I have no taste for the pretention and high-mindedness that lives with all three. I don't care about archival paper, acid-free adhesives, or any of the other finery that comes with creating things. Perhaps, it's a strange thing for a collage maker to say.
I’m not interested in what makes good work great, bad work less than, or what will be remembered as a masterpiece. We will all be forgotten someday. "[T]here's no level of fame or genius that allows you to transcend oblivion", John Green says, "The future will erase everything". Every legacy, no matter how well constructed, will crumble to dust eventually.
What I'm interested is this moment. In today. This instant. In the pumping-muscle treasure chests we keep hidden behind our breast bones. The silent letters of hope and longing running through our veins. Their tender whispers. I'm interested in bridging the distance. Between where one ends and the other begins. Between you and me.
"The only thing I ever hope to do as a writer" Cheryl Strayed says, "is to make people feel less alone, to make them feel more human". I'm not a writer. I'm not an artist, but I have always been seen and saved by the work of those who make things. Things that carrier the capacity to shatter one's in-turned sense of being lonely. It is, after all, one of the greatest gifts one can give or receive. And the fact that I have received it so often means that, as a maker, repaying that debt is my highest calling and my greatest responsibility.
When I stand at my work bench every morning I don't do it to make a mark, or a name, or to leave a lasting memory. Frankly, I'm not that interested. I don't think anything I do is that important. I'm not making history. It's just paper. It's just pictures. It's just glue. I'm simply returning the favor. I’m paying it forward. I'm reaching out in the same way that I have always been reached to.
Steve Almond says that "we are all, in the private kingdom of our hearts, desperate for the company of a wise, true friend." Someone who will sit beside us in the dark. Who will wait with us in quiet patience. Who will be present until the sun comes out again. "Someone who isn’t embarrassed by our emotions, or her own, [and] who recognizes that life is short" that nothing lasts, "and that all we have to offer...is love."
In case no one has told you today, I love you with all my everything.
**special thanks to and , conversations with both you inspired this.
Radiating love back across the bridge to you, your readers, and beyond so it can expand.
Art and Artist are just dull nouns that don’t attempt to capture the living actions of head, heart, and hand. Even the verbs are simple: painting, drawing, writing… in the personal action of art/craft/make/feel we find or lose something and maybe from the artifacts of that someone else finds or loses something of their own.