Sparks

I haven’t been online very much at all in recent months, I know. I have been making more of an effort to be present in the material world. Plus, while there are some aspects of this virtual dimension that are very nice, it was beginning to feel like online life was trying to replace or reshape my actual one.

One of the reasons I prefer pen, ink and paper rather over word processor or even typewriter is feeling. The writing feels more crafted, more organic when I write with pen and paper. The Raven likens it to bleeding on the page. Phoenix refers to it as “casting sparks.” When there are no sparks, the writing is quenched, dead. Even in art, I prefer physical to digital, because we create only those things we can feel. Sometimes, feeling is all we have to hold on to, particularly when the pictures in our heads are off or nonexistent. I believe it’s part of why texture is so often infused in our art.

When I began posting my art to Facebook and, later, Instagram, part of me secretly wished to get some attention. I wasn’t looking to go viral or anything like that, but I did hope someone would notice my work, maybe find it beautiful, and then, in turn, find me beautiful. Part of me even thought that maybe it would kindle or rekindle sparks I worried were dead or lost. When it didn’t, the artwork merely became a vehicle for processing my grief over lost loves and wishes for what they would have become. Raven did the work of exhuming the ghosts, excising the broken glass. Phoenix cauterized the wounds, forged the glass into gold, and exposed the ghosts for what they were—smoke. I learned the truth of things. I confessed to myself. And something happened in the process: Other people—people I never even dreamed—took notice.

So I had to make a decision: Is it about the pain—the grief, the separations, the traumas, the longing? Or is it about the art? When I phrase it like that, I guess, the answer seems simple. But it was anything but. It wasn’t that I wanted to hold on to all that (and let’s be frank here) shit, but I wasn’t ready to let go. I wasn’t ready to let go of the dreams, the love, the wishes, the possibilities of reconciliations—all the things that I perceived to be the light sides of the dark. If I left the windows and doors open, the things that had gone fluttering out could return, if they wanted. And if they never came back, that was because they didn’t want to—or, worse, because they wanted to stay away. And that was a painful truth I refused to face. The thing about leaving all the windows and doors of your heart open, however, is that your heart ceases to be your own. Whatever winter or summer burns or blisters outside invades your insides. The rain gets in. And animals. Sometimes savage ones. Sometimes, these animals happen to be people. They take things that you built and nurtured, tear them apart, steal them, soil them... Worse, they take and leave feelings. A person who has nothing but guilt and shame to offer themselves has little more to offer anyone else. Their own heart doesn’t even let them in. Why would you let them into the deepest parts of yours?

So the art changed shape: It grew from questions. The process of creating each piece was the interrogation. Each work of art developed as an answer. Somewhere in there, the part of me that hoped for reconciliations simply yearned for repair—to be whole.

So while people from all over the world were noticing my art and some of them were really digging it, this deeply personal, therapeutic journey was unfolding. I have some concept of discretion, and the presence of my Aspects probably obscures things to the casual observer as well; but it still felt rather like being naked at a 4th of July barbeque. On one hand, the exposure excites, but on the other hand, you worry something might ignite your naked bits.

The validation that I am an artist was somewhat addictive, too. At first, it drowned the absence of encouragement from the people I wanted to take notice. Then it got to the point where I stopped caring whether those people noticed me at all. But all addictions have dark sides to them: Even the ones we think we manage, by the very nature of needing to be managed, manage us. While sharing my art was getting to be less about the people who were absent from my life and more about the ones who were present, I was still missing the point of why I was creating art. I craved attention, and my art garnered that. I wanted affection, and my art sometimes even won that. But that’s not what the art is about. So the art began to dry up. Some days, I would show up to create, look at the canvas, and find only Phoenix and Raven staring back at me, blank as oblivion, asking who I was and why I was there.

People speak of the voices and whatnot in their heads as though they are bad things. But to a creative, silence in there (not to be confused with stillness) is a sheer fright.

Parallel to this, I had also begun to notice…shadows in the Internet, such as people sharing videos and posting comments of things that are nothing short of horrific. People were recording other people experiencing these terrible and embarrassing things and then posting it for the whole world to see. Particularly during the last US Presidential Election, people (some of whom I adored) were posting and reposting awful things—racist, sexist, normalist things. And it seemed like the shit spread thicker than the sweet. Likes, loves, compliments, and supportive comments appeared less often between the diatribes, memes and trolls. Although little of it was directed at me personally, it cast the world in a harsher, less beautiful light.

And then it hit me: That’s what the art is about. It’s not about people or attention or affection. It’s about sharing the truths that make all of these things and everything else in this universe beautiful. It isn’t even about me. When all the particles of all the worlds collapse back in on themselves and we return to the stuff of stars, make no mistake: I don’t create the art. The art creates me. I am simply a gateway for truth to flow into beauty, for imagination to manifest itself into material.

So, with that, I am back here, sharing with you. But what I share with you now and my reasons for sharing are different from before. Then, I wanted your attention, I wanted your affection, validation, permission… Now, I simply want you to recognize that what I share is simply my truth, an expression of the World behind the world, the Universe behind the universe. And that same truth is just the spark of a greater light. And it lives and burns just as brightly in you as it does in me.

Do you see? We don’t always. Not at first. But in time we grow to feel it.

And it’s beautiful.