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.
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.
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