The new temporary apartment is on the side of the building that gets the morning sun and this is a painful way to ease into a day: hammering brightness. Squinting into it, hating, I woke up this morning, finally, thinking: I need to be honest enough to give up art.
All my life I have been fascinated with the ones who exert great energy and discipline into a wrong idea, and now I see that I am that one. These are our moments of truth, this, right now. I can think of no greater wrong than the one purported your entire life. That's a lot of years, and then what? This illusion that was so necessary it lived this long. You fed it, fed it to others, swore it. Hid in it, flaunted it, behaved it. Used it to evade, evade, evade the truth of it, that it wasn't ever real.
How did I ever let it get this far? This out of hand?
The final act of vacating my previous apartment was taking a circular saw to 5 paintings that I just didn't want to move. This is what it has come to, moving these things around, having to accommodate them, a weight around my neck. They will never be seen, they will never sell, they take up space, they cost money to make, and they're not very good. Except the ones I like, and I DO like some, but I seem to be alone in that one, and since I am the only one seeing them, it's pointless to have them for myself. Like if they were an over sized sofa that was a bitch to move and a bitch to accommodate I don't want the fucking sofa. This is what painting has become. My over sized sofa. And I think it may be time to get rid of it.
It will be neither the first nor the last idea to outlive its usefulness. That it is mine is all that makes it sentimental. And that I should never have bought the stupid sofa to begin with. THAT'S the folly, right? Right.
 |
| THAT'S what I'm talking about, baby! |