dream job
What am I even doing?
The rain didn’t stop for me, this time. I was put on the earth to create beautiful things, I declared. I wanted to disarm you; to make you understand that I was giving everything I had, despite how little this means in the grand span of the universe and my small place in it.
The cluster of unfinished pieces stare back from the digital icebox. Each one a little cloudy diamond, each the object of my temporary devotion and quiet release. I scan them, looking for a way back in. Some of the titles immediately reveal the contents within. Others more vague require a refresher.
Click, open, skim, X out. Dust off an old one, or start from scratch? In life, and in art, I usually prefer the thrill of a new beginning. But this has come at the cost of completion. If nothing ever gets finished, I get to stay high on the rollercoaster of my impulses, reacting to shocks of electric inspiration without ever lighting anything up long enough to stay warm.
Deeply I know that choosing one – finishing one – means making a decision that pulls more weight than my body and mind combined. And for decades, I have not felt ready to make it. Wanting it is cellular, subconscious. But wanting it hard enough is not enough to feel ready.
If I didn’t want to write, I would have never written these and countless more words, wouldn’t have furiously transcribed my childhood ennui into stacks of playful and serious stories. If I didn’t want to sing, I wouldn’t have performed every song on the radio before being hit by the silence of generational pain absorbed by osmosis.
I know that this is a strategy to protect my creations, and by extension myself, from the penetrating eyes and voices and the tarnish that comes with releasing something into the void and having to let go of what happens from there. Knowing this intellectually only makes me cling tighter to the illusion that one day I will feel ready, and this will be the moment.
But it took time to realize that feeling ready does not arrive as a shock of insight. You will never wake up one morning with the assurance that today is the day. Waiting for it to happen feels like chasing a moving target. It’s the little particle of light you see when you close your eyes, that keeps moving whenever you look its way. Along the way, you might have a few existential jumpscares that confront you with your own mortality and force a renegotiation of values. You will probably need a few of those, each one making you more resistant to snapping back into the status quo.
It takes a late bloomer to know that this strength is not the force of one defining moment, but a practice of sustained ones. None of this is revolutionary, but it is the hardest easiest concept to put into practice as an artist.
When I first started adopting that title, it felt like wearing a thick packing envelope, unwieldy and poorly sized. Either full of empty air, signifying all the gaps between what I say and what I do. Or so tight that every movement rips ever larger holes exposing just a bunch of filler material. A messy package, addressed to no one in particular.
A label can limit you. It can impose unreasonable expectations and choke down experimentation. But it can also free you. You get to choose. For me, this label is a way to reclaim and resurface an instinctive identity that was never given fertile ground, to weave a wreath of all the vines that sprung out of this thorny ground anyway. To clear what needs to be sloughed away, and then plant seeds that only bloom from this soil.
Calling myself an artist expands my world, and my right to do whatever I please inside it. It is self-referential, a way of being as much as an orientation towards the world and a practice of filtering it into different mediums of creation. Claiming the title is the only way to make myself believe it.
I’ve taken this weekday off. I start writing with enthusiasm, but want to quit halfway. I want to burrow into a warm blanket, soft and hidden until the end of time. My attention is drawn away by the women nearby working out the logistics of a local event. Which theme, which DJ is still available, which graphic to put in the newsletter.
It’s unwelcome, borderline jarring. Because tomorrow, I will play out my own version of this. What they do sounds interesting and cool. Just like them — all chunky gold hoops and beige pullovers. But I know: I want these words more than the most interesting, cool, and well-paid job someone else can give me. And that’s enough to keep going.
In the back clear case of my phone, face down on the table, is a IX of Wands card. Resilience, courage, persistence, mastery. The finish line is in sight.
The talking crosses a line into irritation. An accidental glance at someone else’s packed, color-coded Google Calendar makes me go pale. Finally, I block out the noise.
Even after committing all of these words, I wonder What am I doing here?
Dark mode is a physical practice. It is the default setting on all my electronic devices. My default way of being in this world is to soften, dim, and shield against its artificial sensory breaches. A form of protection for my genetic legacy of easy migraines. If only I could put physical places in dark mode. All the grocery stores, open plan offices, and chain pharmacies of my world would suddenly go dim. The counterpart is the embrace of sunlight.
Dark mode is also an emotional practice. Plumbing depths, excavating shadows, and above all being unafraid to linger in the recesses. Befriending them, and tending to them. Projecting them with a rawness that demands to be recognized, makes others go aha. Questioning the forms and formats within which this work has been allowed, and the corresponding value it has been assigned. The counterpart is bringing to light what lies beneath the surface.