It pains me.
You exclaim how important art is to the world, ‘especially in times like this,’ yet I see no one but artists supporting artists. And we can only hold each other up for so long. It pains me. My hands feel like lightening bolts with nowhere to strike but the same place over and over again. Is it my redundancy that bores you? Or is it your thick skull refusing to crack at the shock of my electricity? It pains me. “Are you a student?” I was asked at a gallery opening as my heart was pinned to the wall, my guts dripping with years of hope and anger and wisdom compacted into tight little balls of crap you spent 5 minutes (or no minutes?) looking at. “Do you do this every month or is this your first time?” Does it even matter? Do you really care how many times I slice myself open, or are you just trying to gauge what you deem my ‘success’ against yours? It pains me. The thoughtlessness with which you approach my thoughts. The emoji replies. The ‘you’re so beautifuls’ and ‘omg pretties’ that I could care less about. Are you absorbing it? Does it make you uncomfortable? Is that why all you can point out is aesthetics, of either my own body or my body of work? Dear God, I hope so. It pains me. That in this time where so many of you scream at me to hunker down and produce a masterpiece, half of you don’t think I’m truly capable (because of my vagina), and the other half can’t bring yourselves to really look at it. But you expect my dripping guts to hit different now that I have all the time to weep until they come out of my throat. It pains me. That I can’t control your expectations (or responses, for that matter), but I can be angry about them. I can feel them rolling around in my belly and I can’t ignore them. You’re in this with me, after all. Are you ready to pin your eyes wide open until they fall out of your head with all this time you have now to focus? Oh, you don’t always feel like it? You do actually have other things to do? Or you’re realizing that everything about our world has changed? Me too. It pains me. That as much as I don’t want to, I need you. That as much as I don’t need to, I want you. That I have to find a new balance, after feeling like I barely got my feet on the last tightrope. That I don’t get to see you come face to face with my work. That I feel like I have to continue trying to put my work in your face. That I want to keep creating, but that process is filled with bigger thorns now and I keep having to gently pluck them out of my skin. It pains me, but I’m going to heal. Comments are closed.
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