"...do for love. You've tried everything, but you won't give up."
Bobby Caldwell might have been talking about L.O.V.E. (like, "L is for the way you look at me..."), but I'm talking about the love of life. The happiness, the splendid self.
Don't so many of us die for love? For happiness? For freedom? Even simply for serendipity and joy? The accidental perfect moments? The happenstance? The extraordinary, giddy coincidences?
Well, I've been feeling buzzed - like the kind of feeling you feel when you have so many feelings you just don't know how to feel. It’s a neurotic kind of electricity that can sometimes drive ambition. It can also drive you home, or drive you very far away. I am a writer and a painter and I'm certainly plagued by the artist stereotypes: emotional, passionate, erratic, inconsistent, maybe a bit obsessive.
Do I conform or do I rebel? Am I made to do either? I've got to be honest, I very much enjoy walking the line between the two. I'm a boundary-bender; I don't do well in extremes so you will simply never find me in either of the polar ice caps. I don't know that you'll find me at the equator either because I don’t literally mean that you will find me in the middle. I’ve learned that the mathematical middle never seems to be the actual middle, ya know? Like, how can you measure compromise, accommodation, and adaptability? The middle is always at this weird, like, in-between the in-between sort of thing. Maybe I am being literal and I'm just a New Yorker.... I mean, we really do think we are the center of the world.
I'm having trouble reconciling that I've desperately travelled around the world and back in my mind to avoid the thing I'm most afraid of: I'm afraid of being an artist.
There, I said it. I'm petrified. I love the dignity and respect that comes with working a "normal job." The title, the email signature, the quick email responses. So many of us live in ivory towers, but we might do better in a little hut in the forrest. The Artist is a little respected phenomenon. She never gets her credit, her money, or respect. She overwhelms everyone she touches. She is used for her ideas and taken for granted. She is over-branded and marketed as a product...by people with email signatures. I fear that I will only be loved after I die and that my work may weep in dusty corners, closets, and backup hard drives for eternity.
But, I won't let that happen. "You've tried everything, but you won't give up."
Tried everything to avoid myself, is what I mean. To get away from myself. My Self. The woman who thrives and flies and write letters in the skies. Her pen pours and she always full and fashionable. She has a big laugh and she's just positively alluring. I talk to her, but I won't let her take over because she scares me. She's quite demanding, she has extremely high standards and she’s most brokenhearted by strangers. Instead, I've enjoyed this smaller version of myself because she is anonymous and feels cozy, dressed in oversized clothing.
What haven't I done to avoid my highest, most loved and most loving self? What have I done to stay hidden in the forrest, stay safe in the shade? I've tried everything, and I must give up.
"In my world, only you make me do for love what I would not do. Make me do for love what I would not do."
I am both the protagonist and the antagonist. We are at war, but we are in love. She makes me do for love, what I would not do.
