The last time I talked to my daddy on the phone, he told me that when I got home next we'd have a talk about my future. I never got to have that talk with him. It breaks my heart but I know what he was going to say. He had told me before and my mother confirmed this...What he saw for my life's work was making art. He always thought that's where my future was. He thought that I'd be good at simply making things and selling them. He always wanted me to keep weaving baskets...thought that I had this capacity to market and sell. It has worked once before for me, with the DMB posters and this idea gives me such a rush. Well, he was giving my brother and me a pep talk once about us being lazy or bored or something. He said you can't really do anything of worth without passion. It probably didn't stick with John but it meant something to me. I'm coming into that idea finally...that you have to feel strongly about what your doing or you will fade away. I don't want to fade away. He wouldn't want me to either.
So now this is the goal...to express a lot of things inside of me that very few people have ever seen from me. I have a reason, a place in this world, even if it is small and unpublicised. I feel the strong need in the pit of my stomach to be something, to make him proud, to have passion, and to be a legacy in a world that forgets him or maybe never knew him well enough at all. My dad was an artist and a really sensitive guy. So funny and warm, and so susceptible to sharing. I know that he felt everything so strongly because his blood runs through my veins, and we are so similar. I really do feel that a creative person's senses are so much stronger than anyone else can comprehend. This is how creative people can manipulate a medium so well. We are those kids that are just so affected by things...more than the other kids. We are those people that seem sad a lot but we "do" happy so well. Every sensation is heightened and they're are all these layers to life that can be so hard to get through--just a mess--but you can't replace that excitement and variety and quality to life with anything else but those messy layers. We often have a hard time but it's worth it to me to be present (ask B, this is a very big thing for me) and see the good and the bad in a way that only I can see it.
I really just want to start working so that I can show the world as I see it. No one else can do it the way you do it--not quite the same and sometimes the smallest, strangest perception makes a huge difference to a stranger, your family, or just yourself (for your well-being/development). EVERYONE is capable and everyone is different--this is one way I know God is real and still working among us.
"There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you." -Maya Angelou
Just a few fun things to look at...I've been going through this really basic nostalgic phase. Concepts like childhood, home, education, magic and miracles, probably just because it’s that time of the year when we all sort of get like that :)
Chris Van Allsburg, Author/Illustrator of "The Polar Express" and "Jumanji"
The Morton salt girl--almost 100 years old! Thinking about carving her into linoleum and making lots of prints! Blank cards in interesting color schemes, maybe?
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