Why I stopped writing

The world requires an artist - a true artist - to be wildly impulsive, passive to their own emotions; unable - or unwilling - to censor their deepest reactions. A good artist - be it musician, painter, choreographer, or writer - takes an instant back seat to their instincts and ride.

A good artist is raw.

And I mean inside and out. When rage comes, they take it. They open their palms and follow. When sadness comes, they steep in it. They taste it and recreate it. There are no locked doors between their consciousness and the murky depths beyond - those corners are visited regularly, and there is comfort within the insanity of it all. That instantaneous moment of response is ...almost like home... it's a character trait... sometimes a flaw.

We are prone to its obsession, and we live by its every passion. Some call it immaturity - others call it reality. Poets call it blood. Musicians call it love.

Somewhere along the line, one comes to link their biggest heartbreak to their impulsive decisions. They look around and realize that they've lost the things they wanted, valued most. They realize that they are always shedding skins, and incapable of holding on. Most importantly, of being held on to. Suddenly there is a huge value in that.

Keep working backwards, and your subconscious links that rawness, that RAWness, to a vulnerability that it's unwilling to go through again. It starts carefully replacing the doorknobs to your thoughts with those that lock, that must be jiggled a certain way before pushing open. It decides that maturity is worth investing in. And it begins to work on censorship. It finds a different venue of protection, and stifles what ignites quick passions.

No longer do curses fly out of one's mouth without thought. No longer do those lips wrap hungrily around a cigarette, a perfectly rolled blunt, or a familiar, juicy dick. No, instead they hesitate, as if their reins were pulled suddenly by the front of the brain. Censorship has taken over - right and wrong is weighed heavily, consequences unfold like umbrellas. The actions stumble. Most importantly, the words catch.

The artist does not know what to do, except Be Good.

This post should have originally been 6 sentences long. It could have been concise, to the point, so raw that it only took 30 words to describe an exact point or passage in time. But no, by the time my fingers left the shower and found a keyboard, the letters have been censored. Stretched. This happens all the time. It frustrates me.

I no longer paint, I no longer write. I no longer succumb to desires at whim. I am no longer able to lose control so freely to the delicious thickness of vulnerability.

That, after all, is what creates unfiltered, amazing work, isn't it? Being vulnerable?

I've grown up.
And I think I miss the old me.

Last Night

In an attempt to ease the tension of a stressful day, I met up with a friend of mine in midtown for tea. It was rather for the pleasure of her company, using the tea as our medium – her personality in itself is soothing, balancing.

Of course, midtown is the last place I would voluntarily find myself in after a hectic day. The streets are vibrating with colliding energy – there is haughtiness, insecurity, hunger, confusion. It’s hard to find the joy buried in all that.

We spent most of the remaining daylight tucked into a corner of Macy’s, catching up with a (stunning) high school acquaintance we found behind the MAC counter. Her hair, in a classy and swirling bob, was a dim, bleached white cascading into deep cerulean blue. The triggering recognition was because of that badass hair alone; in high school she was always an amazing palette of styles. She had a unique, delicate ball piercing in her lower lip, which took nothing away from the soft and sensual image that radiated around her in waves. It was quite a pleasant reunion. She is such an aesthetic success.

As the counter got busy, we made our way to a subtle (expensive!) teahouse on this popular strip a few blocks over. Fully relaxed into our conversation, I get a message from my homegirl Maria – and guess what bitches – MistressMom was going into labor! Riley H. R. was born 30 minutes after her water broke. Un-freaking-believable. The universe carried his birth over swimmingly.

I only pondered briefly about what it meant to have someone in my “actual” realm of existence give birth to a real live baby. I mean I have friends who are parents, shit I have friends who are grandparents. I have friends who were pregnant one day and a mommy the next. I have friends who are fathers to 6 kids with different women, who are mothers to 3 kids with different fathers, and who have established 2.5 with their doting husbands. But none of them were one reach over, none had the quietly-distributed title of Extended Family. It was slightly jarring at first, but I’ve come to know her belly and the story behind it, so Riley’s coming into society was already well in way. Welcome to the family, handsome.