If I Were Art

There is a hypocrisy in the human experience, the way we view our image in the world.  A gap, where many are trapped, but few can escape. Where beauty, perfectly crafted, falls in the way of words not meant to create but destroy.  No matter how much you build and paint, a single word threatens the craft. At least, to me. 

There are long nights, hard nights, stuck in front of the mirror.  Wondering, questioning, and studying improvements that could be made if the world were paper and you were of pencil.  The face that is all too familiar, staring back at you, seems to be a tragic piece of art.   One in which you didn’t get a say, you were just created that way. They whisper that art doesn’t have to be beautiful so long as it is interesting. But being interesting is much harder when your art is created of flesh and bone. People are so quick to skip the parts that you view as a masterpiece – the parts you chose to praise. Rather they find glory in the thrill of the raze.  They choose to pick apart pieces you meant to erase.  Or at least, you think.  

 

The reflection of your face, the painting you study, finally convinced and seeing there is beauty, betrays you in public.  Private acceptance and applause, praise of your art turns to side-eyes and lewd calls.  Whispers and taunts that drive down your price.  It beats the frame and tears the canvas you have convinced yourself is as good as it gets, so you put it on display.  People around you lower their eyes, in search of murals far more interesting that the one you provide.   

And despite the blue ribbon you spent years persuading yourself to wear proudly, the voices of others drown out the joy. Your golden rays and perfect planes of beauty, dimmed all too quickly.  There is hypocrisy in earning your praise, yet allowing it to live on glass, threatening to break.  There is hypocrisy in loving your art, allowing others to judge it with a knife or to set it ablaze.  Art does not rely on perceptions to exist, to be beautiful.  It just is.  You just are.  I just am.  

- Sam