You: A recent college grad with a black hoodie pulled tightly against the world and a scowl that would freeze lesser men.
Me: Just wants some frames for my new art prints. I have a coupon.
But I see you, friend, far more than you think I do. I smile brightly, purposefully widening my eyes like a puppy does when emphasizing play over battle. You deepen your frown, clearly interpreting my joy as ignorance. It’s fine. We begin an awkward dance of matte colors for my paintings. When you finally say something past “no” it’s that these paintings are awfully “whimsy.” You mean “whimsical” and you mean it as an insult. You are baiting me into playing the Karen for a scenario you have already picked out in your mind for this interaction.
But like I said- I see you, friend, far more than you think I do.
How do I tell you that I too was once a recent college grad, determined to fill the world with art? Sure that I was the savior of my medium, positive that the people around me were obstacles. I didn’t buy a black hoodie, as black washes me out a great bit, but I did get so angry at everyone and everything that I ended up on a therapist’s couch.
I can’t be your therapist in this small moment- there’s not enough pause between “what about the gold for this one-” and “well that one looks a bit bright-” for me to tell you all the answers to questions I know you have.
If you could only see me for a moment.
I too had to build a non-art life. We unfortunately live in a world that no longer barters. I could not play Chaucer and pass off my rhymes for bread. No I had to bend my abilities to a paycheck, just as you do: me behind a desk and you behind this counter. But there is still rebellion to be had, my friend! Look before you at my fanciful pieces. We are color matching the crown on a watercolored otter’s head, the oiled water drips off a heron’s escape, the sketches of sun cresting over the very mountains that shadows us this moment! Is this not beautiful rebellion? I built my non-art life so large that I no longer simply shelter art, but celebrate it!
Can’t you see? I continued to build up my non-art life and my non-art paycheck and now I can do the very thing I first set out to: Art. I have space, I have coin. My walls are a celebration of divine inspiration. There is not a Fall Festival that cannot feel me coming for their pottery and their paints! And through my non-art sacrifice I have gifted myself time. Time to learn shading waters and sculpting on the wheel. Time to put those rhymes out into the world.
But you cannot see. Not past your own pain, certainly not past that old hoodie covering even your eyebrows. Not yet. So tonight I will pray for you and paint for you (though it’ll be a pink, drunk octopus of which you would not approve), that your non-art life brings you too, to this very artistic place.
