starving artist

[prismaticbleed]

 

 

(not j)

I've noticed something that I do that's very, very stupid.
I use art as a metaphor for life.

Personally, I don't draw. But Jewel will never stop drawing. Others will never stop writing, or brainstorming, or playing music, or finding ideas in every little thing they see. No matter how apathetic I am towards their creative prowess, it will not crush their spirit.
However, that fact has no bearing on how I feel, and that is simply "nothing."

Yesterday, one of us visited TRiPPY's new website to look at all of her old iMAGNi art. Her work from the early 2000s has the exact same magical vibe that our work from that time period does. When Jewel sees the Gens, she thinks of the J-Monsters, and she loves it. TRiPPY's old art was bold, colorful, and unique... and it wasn't perfect. Yes, there were perspective errors. Yes, the anatomy was off. But did we care? No. In a way, we loved it even more because of that imperfection. It was creativity and imagination spilling onto paper through ink and paint, brightly colored dreams captured in the only way they ever could be.
Looking at those pictures, many of us felt a deep sense of wonder, admiration, joy, love. It reminded us so much of our own old creations.
But some of us saw that same art and felt despair. "Look at what she did, so long ago," they sighed. "We never had the guts to draw like that. And what little we did draw, we lost or destroyed." Those few voices wept with regret and sorrow, feeling utterly unworthy to be viewing such beautiful snapshots of the past, haunted by darker thoughts that overshadowed everything else. Don't you remember? Art is a waste of time. And all you do is draw, so you're a waste of time, too. You're worthless. You're nothing. Just like your art.
Over the years, those are the voices that eventually won. It was simply a matter of volume and quantity. There were too many of them, all the time, repeating that same damning mantra. You'll never amount to anything. Stop wasting your life. Grow up. Despite the doubts weighing us down, we feebly chased our dream during high school, desperately holding on to the same red threads this courageous woman left behind for us, creating our own world from jester hats and gemstones... but even that faltered. Someone new appeared, who did not care about art, and she quickly led us into destruction. We fought back, but then college was at our doorstep... and someone else lost their mind.
Everything seemed to end at that moment, when dreams and nightmares were forced to become one grotesque abomination. It was the unholy fusion of hope and despair, a thing so unavoidably horrible that we abandoned everything in an instant, choosing oblivion over destruction. It had all happened so fast.
One moment, we stood at a canvas, holding a pencil in our hands and joyfully wondering what we would create next, now that we were pursuing our one and only dream...
...and then a woman walked in, stood before us, and dropped her clothes.
That was the day we died.

Since then, our artists haven't drawn much. They've tried, but it took years for them to begin again, and when they did, their heart was often no longer in it. Their work had been tainted irreparably by the intrusion of an entirely different reality, one dripping with tar and blood. Dark memories of the past that had been specifically buried were suddenly rearing their ugly heads.
The artists had known, as the fabric hit the floor, that they could no longer live once the dam broke, once the walls fell. The only reason they had been able to create at all was because this deplorable muck had been graciously hidden from their awareness. Now, it had burst into their world of color and light, shredding their very life with its merciless pink nails, and we all knew it was the end.
The artists fled underground, and we began to awaken from the shadows... slowly, irreversibly. Since then, this life has been ours, but now things seem to be shifting again.
The problem is, what other direction could we possibly take now?
So yesterday, curious to see what people would say, I wrote up a quick FB post about it.

"Looking back, I remember a time when I wanted to be an artist. I had dreams that I chased with childlike joy and enthusiasm. Now, I've given away or destroyed virtually everything I've ever created, and I'm not sure if I have any dreams left.
Is it better this way? Is it worse? Where do I go from here?

However, it wasn't until the replies started coming in that I realized my stupid mistake.
To those who read those words, "art" just meant "art." It meant drawing, or sketching, or painting. It was a mechanical function, that's all.
They didn't understand that, to us, "art" is LIFE. To us, art=purpose. Art is synonymous with joy and hope and wonder.
We weren't saying "we've stopped drawing, but we used to love it; is that right?"
No, in all actuality, we were saying something far more serious.
"We used to find joy and purpose in life. Now, we don't. Now, life is meaningless. Should we just give up?"

So, as you can imagine, the comments we received meant something entirely different in our eyes.
These originally spoke about art, but they've been edited to match our interpretation:

"You can still live! Don't ever give up what once gave you real joy! Your reason to live hasn't disappeared, you CAN find it again."

"I have never seen myself as much of a guru when it comes to giving life advice... so long as you have something to create for, you will always have a purpose, a reason to live. We make mistakes, throw away old work or lose it, and I guess it is our folly but at the same time it still happened, we benefited from creating it and still grew as people and artists."

"Throwing away your life doesn't mean you threw away your right to live. Start a new chapter in your life, and fill it with new creations. You are still worthy of life."

At this point I noticed, as usual, that I had not properly communicated my point.
So I wrote another message about art, which again, I will correct here to the true meaning:
I suppose I didn't clarify: I lost all motivation and desire to live many years ago. But some days I look at the hopes and dreams of others and think, "I wish I could give my purpose in life to them, if it would give them the joy I can no longer feel." There's no desire to continue living myself. I think I'd prefer it if I had no reason to live anymore. I don't chase my dreams anymore because I'm tired of them being "my dreams." I want to give my reason to live away, to someone else who wants to live.
So I guess my real question is: if I find no joy in life anymore, should I even keep on living?

The first response was an unintentional knife to the heart.

"Nope."

I knew they had good intentions. I know they only meant "If it doesn't bring you joy, don't bother with it." That is good advice, in and of itself.
But when you have severe depression and apathy like this, NOTHING brings you joy. Even joy as a concept is unfathomable.
It's like everyone else in the world has a secret treasure box inside, which can only be opened by a special key of "joy." Most people find that key, and they use it to open their secret treasures, which are full of dreams come true and happy endings. Finding their joy allows them to live with joy, as long as they don't throw away the key. It's a normal thing, it's supposed to happen.
However, with depression, it's like everyone keeps telling me "you just need to find your key!" "I'm sure there's a key out there somewhere." "Just try a bunch of keys, I'm sure one of them will work!" when they don't realize that I don't even have a freaking box.
I have a whole collection of keys, that I was given as gifts, that I picked up off the ground. They're beautiful little fragile things. And sometimes I pick them up and stare at them, admiring their beauty, and I cry, because I can't do a goddamn thing with any of them. What good is a key that doesn't open anything? It's useless.
When you're drowning in emptiness like I am now, it's impossible to find joy. Life itself is a box that no key will open.
So why bother trying?


We got two more comments after that one, though.
Our interpretation, again, is as follows:

"Ask yourself why you once wanted to live. What motivated you to wake up every morning? Then ask yourself what that old motivation is doing for you now before you make a decision to end your life. It is no small thing to throw your life away. Make sure that if you do it, you do it for the right reasons."

A strange mixed message. The last sentence especially left a strange feeling in my chest. It's not the first time I'd received such a message, except this time it was unintentional.
"If you're going to kill yourself, just make sure you really want to die."
I know that wasn't what the commenter meant, but again, I'd heard it before, and that's not something anyone should ever say to a depressed person. Of course I want to die. I want existence to just stop dead. All those old reasons to live are empty now, cold and drained and meaningless. They aren't doing anything for me now except fueling the fire of self-annihilation. Life holds no joy or hope anymore. I can't remember a time when it did.
So would that be the right reason to die? According to some, yes.

The problem is, even if I won't personally accept the fact, I'm not the only person living in this body.

Jewel wants to live. Fiercely. She wants to live. She saw that old artwork by her role model and nearly burst with joy.
"Look at this!" I heard her exclaim in delight, as she showed us the original Gen pictures. "Do you understand how amazing this is? Look at the magic! Look at how many dreams had their beginnings in this little picture!!"
Her eyes were sparkling; she was in tears. I just stared at the picture. It meant nothing to me.
But to her, to many others, it was the spark of life...

There was one last comment on that FB post, one that was oddly inspiring despite the fog. I'll leave it as is.

"get new art materials and start your NEW JOURNEY and your art WILL EXPLODE! TRUST ME ON THIS!!!!!! sometimes we have to get rid of the old to make new messages on our canvas! BE PREPARED TO GROW!!!!!!!!!!!"

There is truth in that, this we know. But there is also fear.
When Jewel was showing us TRiP's art yesterday, Jay was simply staring at it, caught somewhere between delight and despair. He recognized the life in it, the fire of creativity, the joy... but in that same art, he recognized the stamp of death, the annihilation of everything he held dear.
If Jewel lives, Jay dies.
If Jay lives, Jewel dies.
That's been our dilemma for too long a time, ever since that first hellish second in the college art studio. Art became the antithesis to Life, and the only life we knew for sure was inside.
Jay became the guardian of our inner world, triggering the growth of so many other lives, spinning global webs of thought and emotion. Through his hands, headspace blossomed into more than a dead white emptiness, and he filled it with color and love. But he could not exist outside of his world. In hands of flesh and bone, he could not live.
Jewel, however, still lingered somewhere lost below, protecting the reams of paper her heart shone through. She could not set foot upstairs-- to her, headspace was still forever a blank canvas, something she would not touch for fear of losing that infinite potential. Instead, she moved blood and breath, and created tangible art.
Tragically, the two have been at odds for years. Jewel cannot create her art if Jay's world exists. And Jay cannot maintain headspace if Jewel's work exists.

Start your new journey, the comment read. But only one form of art will survive to move on, and explode into reality like a firework.
The other, the "old," will need to be destroyed...
Be prepared to grow, they said.
But we know, all too well, that a tree cannot grow unless the seed dies first.


I apologize, but I have to attend a graduation ceremony right now.
Jay is planning to enter Central during it, if at all possible.
I do not know if he will succeed, or even attempt. But he will try.
It's all we can do.