>>pk@columbia

2.11.02 - artistic inspiration

I remember in second grade, I drew a safety poster of me and my sister crossing the street on a bike and it had a depiction of myself getting run over by a car while without a helmet. I won first place in my school and received a bunch of prizes, like a free pass to the roller rink and twenty dollars. Afterwards, I thought I would be the greatest artist ever. I had so much confidence in my artistic skill, I just wanted to draw and draw some more.

And then I realized that my original art - the untamed, medieval-perspective, pure art - was too "childish." I moved to a new town and saw that the trend was the filmy, semi-transparent paper used to trace other works of art, like Disney cartoons from a coloring book. Kids saw me, the "new kid" in the corner drawing my own art, and laughed. I ran home that night and cried to my parents and said I would never draw again. Sadly, I never did.

I took up writing and wrote a bunch of funny stories, but they got corny after a while. It must've been really corny because in third grade, you're not supposed to know what is or isn't corny. I continued writing, but in the form of a journal, chronicling my experience, or lack of experience with girls (experience in the innocent sense, like talking to them... not that other stuff, you perv), my Pop Warner football endeavors, and other things to look back on and smile about. And amid these words, the drawing was nowhere to be found. Writing was my new art, but in a sense, it wasn't art at all; at least not the art I once possessed and missed dearly.

So I'm in college and approaching my last year as a teenager. I take photographs and doodle stupid things on index cards, but I've still avoided the artistic initiative. I've done things for school projects or for cheesy decoration, but I've never poured my heart into something just for the sake of expressing how I feel. I might have written some maudlin pieces just to find sympathy in a girl, but that is cheap stuff compared to the art I'm thinking. I'd like to say that I'm on the verge of an artistic inspiration, but maybe that too is just a cheap excuse to make something superficial, give it a fake theme, and call it my artistic achievement. Something real, something substantial, something... sublime -- well, at least I'm confident about the concept of art. Now, come find me!