expression – Page 2 – Artistic Apathy

Permanent Vacation

Have you found your new home yet?

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I see. There’s no need to rush things. In the meantime, why don’t you try making yourself at home?

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I see. That’s unfortunate. Just wait and it’ll happen.

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And by wait I don’t mean waste time. There is a lot of living to be done before you find the right place.

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Maybe it would make it easier if you believed that that place was already being prepared for you.

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See, you don’t see it now but your bed has already been made. And it will remain. So there is no need to stress.

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Must we go on about this any longer? I’m starting to grow tired.

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Good night.

Blood, Sweat, but Mostly Tears

Let me paint you a picture.

A young man is troubled with growing pains.

When he was younger, everything was simpler. Everybody played together and less thought was given to what clique you were a part of or how you looked for that matter.

He found that when he got to high school, he felt invisible. Some “better looking” and more “suitable” guy stole the girl of his dreams.

He graduates high school and is looking for his place in the world. He suffers from interminable loneliness. All he knows is that he loves art. He sees artists in the media attracting lots of attention and he thinks “I can do that. Why should they get all the praise?”

So he locks himself away in his room. Working on his craft day and night. Determined to prove himself.

He starts to see some success and is getting more attention. Suddenly, people want to be around him. He forms a group of so-called friends who supposedly are there to secure his rise to the top. Then he finds that the industry is shady and he loses a lot of friends because of it. Some even stabbing him in the back.

He grows even colder. “Now I really won’t let anyone in. I’ll become the biggest artist in the world and all the fame and glory will be for me and me alone.”

So he becomes a chart topping success almost overnight. Now many women want to be with him but one stands out in particular.

This woman is very beautiful and she is also very popular so he thinks it would be a good look for him. The two date but he finds they have nothing in common. She only wants to talk about shallow things. At night he lies with her but it’s like lying next to a stranger.

Finally he makes enough money to be able to afford a big mansion in the hills. He moves the woman in with him and they have children.

One day he is sitting by himself and he thinks: “Why did I have children with this woman I don’t even love? Now I have everything I ever wanted. The fame. The money. The house on the hills and the trophy wife. But I still feel as empty as I did when I first started… I don’t want any of this anymore.”

So the boy, now a man plans his escape but it seems there’s nowhere for him to disappear to except a place you can’t come back from.

“So long world, you were never fair to me.”

And so… ends his long and arduous tale.

Life

Life is… sadness. It’s pain. But most importantly, it’s joy… happiness. It’s glee. It can be gloomy. It can be shadowy. It can be depressing. It can make you apathetic, it can make you jaded. It can make you care less. It can make you hateful, spiteful but it can also teach you how to love. It can be inspirational. Life is torment, instability, ambiguity… yet full of light, full of beauty, full of opportunity and full of beautiful people.

Life is all these things.

Let the Choir Sing

I wrote the following while listening to the composition Douze petits chorals by Erik Satie. I hope that you enjoy. It was written as an exercise but you may get some delight out of it.

Douze petits chorals

Oh, to delight in whimsy and to experience all the travesties that come with life.

Everything’s come full circle. How suffocating it tends to be. How encumbering it is. The shifting of a moral paradigm. You begin to question, who you were all along and what exactly it is you sought. Nothing it seems. Chasing the wind. Dreams blown away like chaff. It ceases to be in that moment.

Now you have a new dream but please don’t be so dreadful about it. You are born again to the world. You are a new creature.

My mind… it plots against me. It’s one step ahead of me. I try to outwit it but it seems to know every move in advance like playing chess against a super computer.

What has my wings stitched together that I cannot spread them out to fly? What binds me? Give me your everlasting freedom. I want a taste. I yearn for it in the morning and at night when I lay my head to rest, it is my salvation.

Bring it forth to me so that I may delight in its splendor. Lest I be undone. Unraveled. Left naked and hopeless, lying in the wilderness.

A dreadful end indeed.

Here’s to The New You

All day everyday I’m thinking about how I can improve myself as a person. I steadily observe my flaws and keep record of my shortcomings. Whether it’s detrimental I’m not sure but I feel as though if I never had this conscience weighing on me all day then I would never progress.

Or would I just change all on my own? I’ve seen it happen. There’s that old expression “people never change.” And I wondered if it was true for me. I thought I would never change for the better and then I did. Lots of things happened.

I think it’s because I know the capacity I have to be a loving, gentle person and someone who actually brings light to the world instead of darkness. If I thought I was worthless and didn’t account for much then I guess it doesn’t matter what kind of a person I am, right? After all I can’t make any kind of impact. This is the mentality of a lot of people.

Still, sometimes reading or hearing something I come to feel dismayed. I often feel exposed. The darkness lurking inside me that is, feels exposed. And so sometimes I rather not hear about all the things I’m doing wrong but rather what I’m doing right.

It’s easy to be a fault finder and nitpick all day. Which is what I’ve been doing. I compare my life to others’, my situation, my bank account, even my freedom. Which is my own.

Suffice it to say, it’s so easy to look at all the things going wrong but harder to remain on the positive. That’s our problem. You’ve heard the cliché someone always has it worse and it’s true. There’s people right now who are suffering and going through hard times and still keep their chin up and persevere in the face of tribulation. What do you think it is that keeps them strong?

I find peace after suffering for a very long time and I wonder if I deserve it. Maybe the key is not to think about whether or not I deserve it but just to accept it. After all, as good a person as I want to be, I won’t change anything or anybody if I myself have a lot of work to be done.