What have I been doing with writing and drawing all these years?  Ever since 2nd or 3rd grade, when I started to seriously sit with a paper in front of me with some kind of want within me. What did I want? To be noticed, praised? To be understood? Seen, heard?

It has been a means to an end – trying to find somebody to understand me, trying to communicate. Drawing and writing are just tools. What I want is communication, understanding. Writing and drawing are also ways to communicate with myself, try to understand myself.

When I put my words and images out there and I don’t get feedback or a dialogue, then I feel frustrated and angry and feel it is pointless. Why do I keep doing these things? Why do I persist?

Then I try to be patient, keep going. I think there must be something more for me to figure out. What is it? What do I keep missing? What am I not understanding? Not getting? Has it been right in front of me all along?

Why do I keep writing and drawing? What is it for?  — Recognition – but not recognition like accolades but recognition as in understanding, and camaraderie.

One interior life experience to another.

I’m frustrated when someone responds that something is “good”. I don’t care if they say something I made is good or not – I’d actually prefer if they didn’t. it isn’t what I’m after. “Good” is a lame answer. I don’t like pats on the back; they’re empty. It is not a full recognition, just surface.

I want someone to identify something, notice something, convey something. One interior life experience to another.

Maybe it is a lack in my work. I’m not getting there. I’m still holding back? Maybe it is a lack in the audience? They don’t care. They don’t really look.  (and then back to me – I didn’t make them care. I didn’t make them look)  (and back to them – no one can force anyone else to engage)

There is some kind of disconnect.

Maybe I’m too needy.

Maybe I’m just needy enough – to keep trying, to keep exploring, to keep wanting to perceive clearly – to know, realize, acknowledge.

I don’t want the games and toying and shock-value art. It feels false. Why all the masks and irony and slyness? Are we cool when we make ironic statements? I say, who cares for disaffection; who cares for irony? I don’t. It has no heart. It has no soul. It is cold. So much of art has been cold for so long. Cold and pretentious and empty and mean-spirited. If you have disdain for your subject and for the rest of the world – why are you doing it? Artist as bully?

I want the common… the communal…the compassionate.

Not the competition.

But who am I fooling? I’ve been cold; I’ve been competitive. How would I recognize these things if I didn’t know them myself?  But  there is also something innocent and true and sure still inside me that doesn’t want and doesn’t understand the game. A part of me has held on for so long, waiting to be understood as other than that.

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