markclindsey.com
follow me
  • HOME markclindsey.com
  • digital drawings
  • facesnewyork
  • blogblog
  • thisweekintheculture
  • info : contact

Certainty

12/26/2016

3 Comments

 
Picture
This year a friend of mine lost his job.  Like most of us it wasn’t a job he loved – it was a job that paid for his life.  He is at that moment, right before you make a new choice, where you feel completely lost, absolutely mistaken, where every past move looks like the wrong move in hindsight.  These are terrible moments of uncertainty.

This year I raced out and voted for Hilary Clinton.  Not because I believed in her but because Donald Trump is so wildly unfit to be a public servant (and I will graciously leave my description at that).  This was also a moment of uncertainty.  I knew that if she won the inevitable American desire for a fresh change would turn rancid against her and nothing would get done.  At the very best liberals, women, gays, and minorities would have been able to breathe a little easier for the next four years.

This year I saw myself through a couple of huge art projects: the completion and publishing of “This Gay Life” (a graphic novel) and “Faces New York – The Digital Drawings”.  I poured everything I had into them with a real sense of urgency, and making them was truly rewarding.  But did they pass muster – did they connect?  Were they not rushed into production for fear that if I did not I wouldn’t have had the confidence to pursue them at all?  Were they good enough?  I am not certain.

Yesterday my friend called me.  He said I don’t know what to do – I’m lost.  And I knew exactly what he meant.  To be an artist without that absolute, all consuming path, a deeply etched direction, is to be just like everyone else – a little lost.  So I told him so.  I admitted that while I have always been good at a lot of things I have never had a single clue just what it is I really wanted, or what I should really be doing with my life.  And so what? I exclaimed.  Who does?  I just want to create things.  I could hear him breathing on the other end of the phone line. 

There.  I admitted it.

Direction can be an illusion; sure to change, end abruptly, and tell us exactly nothing.  I ask a lot of myself as an artist but a lot of this is vanity, or that deep insecurity that beats the drum to say yes!  See me?  I matter.  I did this thing.  And I’ll be damned if this does not remind me of a certain newly elected official, boasting and bragging all the day and night but connecting – really connecting – with no one.  I wish him luck.  Even more I wish him wisdom.

For me I am going to stick with where I am at – a little uncertain, and I’ll see where it goes.

See you in 2017.

x - Mark

Posted in Oranjestad, Aruba.
 
 


3 Comments



    Author


    Mark Lindsey is an artist and writer formerly from the streets of New York City and now residing in the forests of Connect-icut.  He likes it there. 



    Archives

    June 2022
    January 2022
    July 2020
    August 2019
    January 2017
    December 2016
    June 2016
    January 2016
    January 2015
    March 2013
    July 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    October 2011
    August 2011
    May 2011
    January 2011
    November 2010
    October 2010
    September 2010
    August 2010
    July 2010
    June 2010
    May 2010



    Categories

    All
    Bazaar
    Blurring The Lines
    Bookish
    Certainty
    Cocktail Hour
    Connecticut R & R
    Early Glamour
    Exhale
    Facsimile
    Goo Goo Ga Ga
    I Hate Bling
    Keeping It Fresh
    Michael On The Radio
    My Bowie
    Rabbit Hole
    Savannah Gardens Part 1
    Savannah Gardens Part 2
    Sex And The Rerun
    Slob
    Slow
    Straighter Than Straight
    Tastes Like Summer
    The Middle Ages
    The Plush Moment
    The Rookie
    Unmarried
    Waiters

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.