Lookouts

Two birds sit like statues on opposite ledges of a hollowed stone doorway like they wouldn’t fit anywhere else in the world. They sit and stare, and think about myth. The big ideas are animal. Where did the ideals of bravery and heroes spawn? Did they emerge from caves like swimmers from an ocean swell?

The ocean is a monster. I want to write about the water. No, dreams. Can I talk about how tired I am? Can I spill out my deepest darkest secrets, to you?

Can I fall asleep now?

Let gravity fix me

Raise my palms over my eyebrows…

and sink

and think

300 feet

deep

Down the Uploading. Pause for Exploding

It is something I will never remember

I wrote everything down so I wont forget

I filled books

But the paper is on a countdown

Of explosion

My paper mind,

Lined in gold

Scratched with red

Information

Overload

These visuals and interactions do not meet the objective completely therefore more conceptualization is necessary. This act is all, the deadline is concrete. There is structure. There is intent. There is design and the included elements and principles. There is the message and there is an audience and a lesson to be learned. There is a practical application but most of all. There is me. And there is what I will show the world.

I’m too stubborn not to although I know I will fall apart trying.

Third Time’s a Charm

Don’t forget me now

Think of me when

We may never see
So, my childish, drunken heart is trapped beating slow and tired under quilted suns. Pretty patterns of blue and gold coat me as I’m drowning in the sounds of jazz while a deep voice sings about love. He sounds like November. He knows no other songs and sings. And he sings like darkness beats and he sings for me and he knows what I know and he sings in my dream.
Slumberland Slumberland,
Blanket well in the wake of a night. 

Ning

Fragments race across the screen revealing what is. Is this sensory overload? Information as a drug?  Can I have some more? No way, flashes of static, or black and white underneath this layer of reality like my sight is a blanket. My feet are conduits of poor decision-making. And I laugh with a man whom I will never tell my name. I’m too kind to tell him to go away. Three screens? What do you think? Eyes, ego, id.

Tell Me That it’s Nothing

I had a dream that you came to visit. You looked very much the same although your hair may have been a bit shorter. I’m not sure. You came during one of my classes and I was shocked when you walked in the door with that apathetic look of reclusion on your face. My nerves cringed for a moment and then imploded with inner hesitation. I wanted to run over and hug you. But I didn’t. Rather, I sat still at my drawing board and continued sketching the model. Started sketching very poorly because I could not concentrate at all and I pretend to work because I don’t want anyone, especially you, to see me drawing anything poorly. I just keep looking at you while trying my hardest not to. I keep trying to catch your glance but you wont give it to me. I bite my lip. Look at me. Ughhh.

I know the girl who came with you, I’ve met her a few times although her presence was strange. She was running around the room and seemed overly cheerful. That’s just in her nature; it’s sewn into her ethereal sunflower top. It’s on the edge of mocking me. I almost planned on telling her to go away because she just didn’t belong here. But I could never and after my painful impatience was on the hinge of snapping violently, I discreetly remove myself from the classwork and walk over to act all cute and say I’ve missed you.

“Hey.”

“Well, look at you.”  Those eyes scan over me, and you smile. I’ve caged my grins for the moment and just look affectionately.

“What are you up to?” You wont answer me so I read your expression instead. My smiles collapse into concern. You say you’re going to kill yourself on Sunday. 

You didn’t come to visit, did you? You only came to send your goodbyes.

I move towards him. We hug and let go but if I could freeze that moment of embrace I would, for a minute or two. I know that the decision is yours but in the back of my head I am screaming at you, hitting you in the arm, crying that you cannot possibly do this.

And even in my awake, I can still feel your sweatshirt on my fingertips.

The Most Brilliant Red You’ve Ever Seen

While immortality stares me down, I question what I am. She looks down on me through the glass and I bow my head because I feel so unworthy. It feels like the dirt. I bask in this shadow and for a moment, think about those porcelain features. And I don’t want to know her. I have already seen her home. And I’ll get lost in her blue stare, but these are the places I shouldn’t go.

It feels like death. My feet dissolve. 
I step away from the glass and stare at my toes, thinking she will leave now. And I look, right when I think it might be safe. BAM! Id hits me hard like a suckerpunch in my heart. Like before, when I died, but it didn’t hurt this much. Still, every time, she takes my breath and she scars my knees.

Note to self,
Find out where this static is coming from. 

Tell Me All the Things

Turn around,

Your shadow is laughing at you.

And I’ll kiss your neck right before you fall.

Why should I live like I do?

Is this my lack of oxygen or the effect of your fear?

You don’t care that,

We’ll never see again. 

Pretenders

Talk like you know

Talk. You don’t know.
Don’t talk anymore.
I can hear but don’t go
There
I can’t fight.
No.
I don’t want to stand.
I stand down.
I lie on the floor
And sink through my silence.Don’t let me hear you
If you talk
Talk like that
Just pretend

On Validating Art

I look at art and say this is not art but really, I have no basis for this. Are the relentless scratchings of an infantile less art then the creations of an established and esteemed person. No, rather it is not. “What makes it art?” has been asked. The question has been laid down in ink on white, the print is clean.

*Art is classified as art when it’s creator has identified it as such. Anything else is either nature or irrelevant to the conversation.
Next is the issue of analyzing said artworks. What distinguishes the fact of a piece from opinion? I am speaking plainly of not literal depictions but of the meaning or concept or statement or such.
We externally seek meaning not when we wish to know the truth of art, but when we seek to know what another person or group of persons think of it. Somehow the collective agreement of the meaning somehow validates a statement or idea, which seems to be solidified into the truth behind a work of art. This is fallacious. I’m surprised that we, as people still cling to the general consensus as being means for cataloging truth, in anything. It is human nature to seek simplicity in life and nothing is simpler in the entropic world of art than fact. We understand data.  We can outright grasp fact in the clutch of or knowledge-seeking fists and lock it. We look for data in art. That is all anyone looks for when they look for the meaning of a piece of art. An individual will look externally in their search for meaning and they’ll cross-reference and a particular value from whoever agrees the most is most often validated by this individual. It was listed as a fact, it should have been listed as one theory.
When I look at a painting of a man on his knees and am asked what it is, I reply “a man on his knees.” The person who asked says, “That is wrong, it is a social commentary on poverty and its effect on man.” I say, “Yes, it is a man on his knees.”
The statement he gave me was an analysis, a theory, but he stated it as a fact.
Is the creator is the only one who holds the firmest grasp on the meaning of a piece? Who can validate a meaning more than any critic or bystander? Where does the institution draw a line between displaying and validating art?