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Show Aren't we all? It bears repeating that drawing became the way I could process the world around me. Growing up, what I drew didn't matter, the physical act of drawing, itself, allowed me to process more than observations, or facts and figures, alone. To draw was to provide an outlet for any emotion or sensitivity for whatever reason I dare not expose. Drawing became a hidden language, expressing what I could not. Until I was an adult, my drawings were my joys and disappointments, my teenage angst, and the accompanying loneliness from a voice that could not speak. My drawings were the conviction that I would eventually leave my silent and wordless world, and finally be heard. And when I could, I left. Nobody knew what my drawings were but me. Once my voice left my throat, it hung heavy, like condensation in the air. I spoke so loudly I couldn't believe it came from me. In truth, I had been living in silence for so long, that hearing myself was more frightening than victorious. The reverie I hoped to find was slippery, like an eel, like Art, and I recoiled. Freedom to think, to feel, to decide, to just exist felt impossible because I couldn't relax the prickling of the hairs on the back of my neck as I anticipated the moment when the other shoe would drop. I think it is the result of this fear that I found my way back to what I had always known. Because the unpredictability wielded by the unknown has always been more dangerous than the danger I already knew. Comfort in chaos. I could go into specificities at this point. I could write about experiences worthy of person's nightmares. I could write about the malignancy of fear. I could write about how I learned that coming to terms with mortality is not graceful. It is angry, and ugly, and wicked. It is obsessed. I could tell stories that would elicit hugs of sympathy, followed by immediate and distancing clucks of skepticism, wondering why I didn't do this or why I didn't do that. Those distancing clucks of 20 |
