Draw a line. Draw another. Connect the two with a side swipe of the pencil. Eventually a picture will form, I am told, like shapes in clouds. After hideous amounts of dreary practice, I have come to the conclusion that I lack the skill. My lines become crawling scribbles which if they are animals should receive a final benediction. When I was younger, my inflicted punishment was art classes. My mother wanted to raise me to be an artist, (actually, no, an Artist, can’t forget the capital A.), and so put me into a program of anything that might take me. I kneaded my way through sculpture, spun my way through pottery, orated Antigone, stained my clothing painting and incessantly got my hands in the frame in an animation class.
My mother, of course, loved everything I made.
Now I’m left wondering how much of it has survived, tucked away in file folders, hidden in her papers like squirreled away nuts of a particularly bitter flavour. The only attribute found shining in the dust has been my practically useless ability to create three dimensional structures without reference. The classic example being lanterns. I can make practically anything you like. (Once a tesseract construct was almost accomplished, but the material wouldn’t stand up to it). But, the inevitable, you have to tell me what to create. I don’t have the creativity to think of more than basic tattoo shapes, little figures of people or winged hearts.
I wonder sometimes if I’m a disappointment to anyone else. Bred a gypsy, I’m supposed to be creative and imaginative and bright, and yet I don’t find any of it within me. Instead I apparently wander around being different. I’m serious, lacking a basic understanding of being silly, and there’s no spark to light a precious grin of recognition from people who carry that enviable madness my homeless life tried so hard to sink into me. I want to start meeting people whose parents wanted them to be doctors and lawyers and accountants. I want to see if the feeling matches up, the mean aura of self-annoyance.
Somebody give me something to riff off of? Please, somebody implant some ideas. I am a waiting garden.