ruin
In Jerry Saltz’s book, Art is Life, he quotes Lawrence Weiner. He says that “art isn’t just something that messes up the viewer’s day,” if it’s doing it’s job, if it’s done right, Weiner says, then it’s supposed to “fuck up their whole life.”
I think about the way I live my life. The where and how of it. The routines, rituals, and logistics. How it all occupies less than 200 sqft and how most of that is made up of collage materials. And, sometimes I wish that I could be ‘normal’. That I could be happy with the average state of being just like everybody. That the standard goals of owning a home and a corporate career path could sate and satisfy me. Maybe then I could have made relationships work better. Maybe then my kids wouldn’t have had a dad that’s such a weirdo.
Sometimes I wish that I could just turn on the tv at the end of the day and not think about anything. That I could be with and around regular people. That I could manage to connect with them and talk about the things they do. But, art started ruining me early. I used to watch my dad draw when I was little. I’d get so angry and overwhelmed when I couldn’t do it as well as him. There I was, wrecked and ravaged before kindergarten. I never stood a chance at normality.
That’s the fine print that comes with being a maker,
says, “If you choose to be an artist your life will look different to everyone else’s”. You’ll feel too much. See too much. You’ll be too sensitive. You’ll obsess over things that are of no importance to the world around you and you’ll utterly disregard things that society deems to be of the highest value. Belonging will be difficult. Fitting in, almost impossible. It’s a life of disruption, disturbance, devotion, discipline, and difference. It will be slower, stranger, and lonelier. Vibrant, austere, and awakening. A life unrecognizable to anyone unaffiliated with the capriciousness that creativity brings.
When you choose to be a maker, you are choosing to be undone, to be restructured, to be reorganized, and rearranged. You are choosing to defy the typical ways of being. To unsettle the surface of every seemingly stable thing. To implicitly reject the expectations of the status quo. It is a ‘no-saying’ to the kind of ease and comfort that convention brings. You will be ruptured and ruined, and in the ruptured ruin of your life, you will find your reason for being here. And, if you’ve done your job, if you’ve done it right, you’ll help to fuck up someone else’s life entirely too.
May you find peace in your apartness.
May your strange-difference be both shelter and strength.
May you always find meaning in the blessed-curse of a creative life well-ruined.
In case no one’s told you today, I love you with all my everything.
Relatable, thank you. When my daughter was young and I was in my 20s, I went through an art car phase and I made the ENTIRE interior of my car a collage of old fake flowers and bits and bobs and fake fur, etc. And I painted the outside many colors many times. I loved it but it felt so agonizingly awkward pulling up to my daughter’s elementary school to pick her up in my crazy art car in front of all the “normal” moms with their normal cars. Luckily my daughter loved it! And she helped me glue things in there sometimes. We dressed up in whacky clothes and did photo shoots with my car! So thankful for her!! But yes I never fit in and it is indeed a blessing and a curse. Thank you Duane for finding the words to speak about this so eloquently!
Feeling this one so hard. On the flip side, without art I’d still be an awkward weirdo with few social graces who doesn’t fit in to many circles. But I’d be all that without art to fill the void that normal people seem to be able to fill with small talk.