I was at school today, around 12:00pm. I came back to school after visiting it briefly this morning at around 8:00am, I came in, made my presence known and then went back home to do some... "work". I don't really have a job, haven't since September.
I make enough to live frugaly by programming custom software and then giving away this software for free. I then beg and plead to people that they should give me money, even though they don't have to. People seem to be extremely happy that I've done so much good work for nothing, are mildly amused, or mildly annoyed and claim that I owe them even more.
It's as close to a wandering Buddhist monk that I can honestly get to at this point of my life. I'm starting to look like one too; my clothes are in shambles and I usually have a smile on my face.
I can't say it doesn't work out too bad. Last month I took a week off of everything to see my closest family member, my Brother, get married. I also had to pay for a broken window in my car, since someone decided to steal my stereo. The ironic thing is that I just had gotten home from the 1500 mile trip to Ventura, CA. The car was in the parking lot for a good 30 seconds before it, and three other cars in the same parking lot on the same night! got broken into as well. I had purchased the car just a month before on the cheap, since the previous owner kept getting their car, my car now, broken into and many stereos stolen. I had also taken a roadtrip back from Indiana, where I bought the car, back to Denver. I took out a map and realized I had traveled eight states in about a month's time. Even with all this, I came out on top last month with at least enough money to buy this swanky coffee at my left side. It has coffee grounds in it and that's the way I like it, damnit. I didn't pay any bills yet, and I should, since it really sucks to have things turned off.
At noon today, or should I say, 8:00 am today, I was to be finishing up a figure/landscape painting I was working on. I'm not sure if anyone except myself and two other people even went to the morning part of the class, so I didn't feel too bad about playing hookey. At noon, there were a few people, dilegently working on their paintings. We all used the same model, but from different angles and our teacher was making the rounds.
One girl was painting a splatter of colors, very jazzy toward a canvas. "I just have to fix that part, that part, and that nipple". I thought the nipple looked fine. Another girl was painting feet orange and violet. Whereever the paints mixed, it produces the most heavenly... dark grey brown. Another girl, not in our class, was painting a canvas in a style I've seen of hers not change much in passing in at least a year. She basically takes a picture and then copies the picture to a canvas, bumping up the colors here and there to match her pallete. I myself would go insane on that regiment.
One more girl was painting a giant head in muddled oils, ready to lose it. She asked me a few times if she could hit me in the head. Someone else commented that she shouldn't; that I'd like it too much.
Then there was my painting, untouched for two weeks now. It's in something called a "rubout" stage: the painting is basically a cartoon drawing of just the value study. It's as old master as it gets and I'm someone who handed in computer programs for a drawing class last semester exclusively.
My plan at noon was to make my presence known, and... leave again. At home, I'm working on a project that a select group of people might think about buying, meaning the amount of work I'm doing now, may pay off in the next year. I'll break even, at least. I have a major problem about getting a job at the moment, since I hate being told what to do, so no complaints coming from this mouth.
My bottom found the cushins of an old therapy couch that is, for some reason, parked in someone's studio space and I took a nap for a few winks as everyone worked around me. I'm sure the students that don't really know me will start to fabricate, OK, OK, formulate the idea that I am a major slacker that never gets anything done. I just didn't feel like painting that day and I don't think I even have the paints needed to start, lest finish.
Maybe one day someone will find out my secret; that I sneek in on Saturdays when the school closes, I put on my music really, well honestly, too loud and I paint and paint and paint. I'll most likely take 2-4 times the amount of time everyone else took COMBINED and come out with something amazing, or at least give myself an amazing mental condition. No one warns you that if you think too much visually, using your inside eye, that this eye gets strong enough to keep you up all night with nightmares.
I left as comical screams of "alex, come back, all the cool kids are painting!". I just gave a lazy, "Hmmmnaw," and jaunted away. The same girl sighed and stated, "Well, you can go your own way...". I started singing "You Can Go Your Own Way", surprisingly well, even surprising myself that I knew any of the lyrics. I can't even think of the band that wrote the song!
I got out of school and walked home. I felt a little depressed and not in a mood to be creative at that level. Sometimes I think it's all just because something in my life is blocking me in progressing, then I think about it some more, and I realize that there's nothing blocking, but maybe there's something missing. It could be that there's no real family of mine close by, or I'm just horny, or I really should start eating meat of these days. I chalk it up to being either pretty happy or pretty sad and never being able to have a middle ground.
When I get in these moods, I feel that I'm stuck in life, that nothing I do is worth doing. I can take what I hold most and rip it apart. I took the subject of painting and being the artist in my mind's shredder. I'd been thinking about Art and what it is, since I have to write a paper for a Freshman Thesis class I neglected to go to. I swear I didn't know I had it, but the essay needs still to be written. I thought I'd give the teacher a doozy, since I was officially a Freshman four years ago.
I thought to myself; Painting is the stupidiest thing in the world. Here you have a person, the glorified Painter, who takes a huge amount of time to render something almost purely visual onto a flat piece of cloth. The better painters can't really explain their work, since they're awful at verbal communication. Why? Because they spend so much damn time alone in front of something that can't talk.
When they're done with one painting, they'll start another. It's as if they trade life for depicting life. Instead of living it, they daydream it. The problem is, less people will probably care about a painting as they would care about the person, especially if the person did something for the human race in the 6 hours they were sniffing turpentine fumes in a cramped studio. It almost sounds like painters are scared to live life. What good is a painting that is void of life? Crap. It's worth crap. Shit on the road. Less than shit. Run over shit. Paint that please.
By thinking this, I'd basically negated the entire year I had spent going to school full time+, I had negated the awards I had won, and the progress I had made; I had negated all the gallery showings I had somehow gotten into, I had wasted money on the humorous size of tuition. I can't really think of a better way to create an afternoon killjoy.
It makes sense though, as I walk through school and talk to people. Sometimes I think people are too full of themselves and their work, as if the output is life-changing. When I wasn't in school and just drawing for fun, that's all it was; fun. It /was/ life, not apart from it. It wasn't conceptualized and categorized, wasn't bought in a gallery or hung up in a museum to die; it was just playing around and seeking. Seeking what, I didn't know. Drawing someone was like a trick. "Look, I can take this piece of paper, and a pencil and make some scribbles that'll trick your mind into thinking it's you!".
I don't really know why I'm writing all this down, maybe because it came as a surprise to me. Maybe I know I will be at school, at 10 pm on a Saturday, ready to start work on another beautiful painting, totally contradicting what I've stated above. Where will the cool kids be then?
