Art Sucks

Yesterday on the phone my dad asked (as he usually asks) "Well, what do you see happening in your life now?" I answered with my usual "oh...I don't know...I like it here...I could see myself being here...I could see myself leaving" non-committal bullshit that I usually disseminate. It's actually not entirely bullshit. The fact of the matter is that I am in a good place with things and while, yes, I see that change is on the horizon, I also see that the horizon could be anywhere from one to ten (to twenty?) years off.

We live in a lie of a society that tells us one of the stages in life is "settling down." Thing is, not one person I know is "settled." We are always changing all of the time. The second you stop changing, life starts getting real boring. So part of me doesn't really see the point in rushing into making a decision about the "next stage of my life" when this one is suiting me just fine.

OK OK...there's more to it then that. It's that Art Sucks. I feel like it's this illusion that taunts me something terrible. A sexy dress revealing a fleshy thigh on some western road asking for a ride but when you pull over there's no person there. Just some heat rising from the asphalt. Every time I try to pin=point it, figure out what it is, where I fit into it, I feel like it dissolves in my fingers.

I get uncomfortable around words like "art," "artist," etc. Who the fuck am I to claim something I can't define? And the prospect of pursuing such an invisible rainbow does not sit well with my hard-lined capricornian ideas of how things are supposed to exist.

Then again. There is nothing that makes me happier than that terrifying flirtation with a blank piece of paper. Is there anything sexier than running your fingers down the spine of some invisible thought that shivers out of the ether to spread itself out before you? I can't fathom an existence without that feeling. But I'm scared to commit to something so inconclusive.

And that's not even getting into the bullshit that comes along with being in the art world. The SCENE, the PEOPLE, the lack of community and that depressing realization that it's every man for himself and that each one thinks more highly of themselves than you could ever imagine. That conviction you MUST have in the face of adversity. What a tricky temptress this thing is.