So, I'm at a point in my life where I know EXACTLY what I want to do. I know how I want my images to look, how to achieve it more or less, and what my subject matter will be. I could probably be happy doing that until the end of time. The big problem is this: It is not technically possible to make it, and still satisfy the things in life that I feel are necessary by ethical standards. The only solution without compromising my family's lives requires more money than I have. I could move to a cheaper, and more dangerous neighborhood, sure. And sure, I could risk my life and physical well being in order to achieve my art without having it require a seperate space. But then am I to expect to raise my child in a dangerous area, just so I can afford a cheaper place with the space to create my art? Or am I to take the physical risks required to make my art without a seperate space, and risk death and the absence of a mother for my child? What I need to do to make my art needs a seperate area, or, calls for my risking my neck to capture it.
I'm not going to say what it is that I want to do, because, inevitably, someone else will come along and do it. This is America=Opportunist=Colonialist=Warmonger World, here.
Anyway, this is where being a parent and an artist clash and create a serious dilemma for me. Of course, I have to put my family first. Which means that I may never be able to satisfy the call of being an artist. I seems that anything else I might do that is creative, will not suffice, now that I know what I really want to do.
I just e-mailed a set of images to a curator who is interested in my work, whom I might possibly meet for coffee this evening. A month ago, I would have been delighted that anybody was interested in my work. But today, knowing that this work will never measure up to what I see possible, it feels like crap.
I just want to tell her not to waste her time and mine. I want to tell her to wait a few years and let me sink into obscurity, then call me back when I am old and have maimed myself creating a 3-image masterpiece that will forever go down in history as one of those works that was, tragically, not recognized for its genius until after the artist's death.
I hate "tragic" as much as I hate "Hot Topic depressed". I hate the media and I hate the fact that even though I really don't want to do this, I'm going to wait for her call, and if she wants to meet me, I'll go. And maybe we'll talk about nothing, and maybe she'll tell me she wants the photos, and maybe I'll tell her ok, I have to get them printed. And maybe I'll see them hanging up and decide that it was all good, once one of the members of the Jewish Cultural Center decides that they are worth something, because Jewish people are some of the best patrons of the Arts, god love them. And maybe I'll eventually decide that this is bad, because now I have to produce more and think less, and all I want to do is risk my life making what I see in my head, even if it repulses every other human being on the planet.
Yeah.
