Why I make art

There is no one reason why I make art. But there is one very important one. I can never make peace with losing the people that I’ve lost in life. Breakups, death, moving away. I feel like there aren’t enough lifetimes to deal with that kind of loss. When I make art, it can sort of become a beacon for all the people I’ve lost. My ex. My grandfather, who passed away over ten years ago. Even the people I still have in my life. They change, renew themselves, and play new roles in my life. As it should be. But I can’t seem to accept that they’re gone. Accepting seems like defeat. Worse yet, it seems like a betrayal. And I’m loyal to a fault. To. A. Fault.

So I make art. There’s a piece of history in every piece of art I create. And if I become famous, or, you know, people see my work on Instagram, then let that be a meeting place. A place where the old and the new can gather. Maybe my ex will see it. Maybe my aunt will write a comment below it. Maybe my grandfather’s soul will rejoice. I don’t know. We hold on to a lot of misery in our family. But there’s also a lot of joy. So, so much joy. And why shouldn’t there be. Let’s make it a happy story.

I can’t stress this enough. Losing people is fucked up. I haven’t made peace with it. But I can’t not do anything about that. But they fucking deserve something. The people I’ve loved deserve it. The love I shared with them deserves it. And I deserve it, today. I deserve the peace that comes from making a shitty piece of art while listening to music and thinking about how badly it fucking sucks that this person is not talking to me anymore. Or, often times, I’m not talking to that person because they fucked my life up when they were still in it. And sometimes, it’s just not possible to talk with some people, because, well, they’re dead. So I’ll create art, and that’ll be one of the ways I show them that they mattered. More importantly, they still matter. They’re relevant as fuck, and the fact that I made something physical, something I can touch, something I shaped, is proof of that. Proof enough. Because we’re human, and as wonderful as that is, well, we can’t fucking shape the universe whichever way we want. Or, we can, and this is how I choose to do it. So, in short, shaping a piece of dirt the way I want and crying rivers is how I come to terms with loss, and that’s what I choose to call art.