An Artist is said to be a visionary. As much as we tend to live in the past, when there is art we are playing with the present then giving it to a passerby we’ll bump fists with in the future. Medicine men from once powerful nations would constantly walk the long dirt covered trails connecting hide covered homes searching for the one who could peak into a future not yet born. Medicine Men and Women weren’t always the ones holding the key secrets to medicating the mind…someone had to know where to go when food became lesser and lesser or take unsent invitations that invited unwanted warriors to the pages of their present and prepare for unexpected change.
Today, banks, department stores, stockholders, colleges and the medical field fork out billions of dollars for research, survival is based on visualizing the future and seeing the tiny places in the world the average Johnny Joe and Wild Wilma walk beyond until American Culture says it’s ok to purchase. That’s their art!
But serious, during this day of constant criticism and lack of support…what is art?
It’s the middle of summer and there’s a bald tree in my front yard that I see as being the most gorgeous piece of art in the forest. It’s not dead…it just doesn’t pop out leaves. It’s bald!
Art can be the way you speak. Art can be something you drink. Art is the way you walk, dance, design and find things on the World Wide Web. Art can be found in writing, sliding down giant chunks of plastic at a county fair or being the one putting passion in a colorful bag of cotton candy or putting a golf ball into a hole the size of your fist.
The problem with art is admitting you’re an artist. I mean, you don’t really have to come out and say, “Hey! I am creative!” But it’s nice to tell the face behind the ears that you enjoy being creative. If you don’t see it how can the rest of us pick up on it? If we aren’t reacting the way your imagination perceives its rightful place in creativity…the weirdest thing begins to happen…you go silent.
Shutting down your outlet makes you feel bloated and constipated, I’m talking about the point of gotta go but nothing moves? There’s nothing wrong with switching dreams. When radio isn’t giving me what I want…writing books does. If the words aren’t pouring out like it belongs on the front page of a fancy magazine, I’m painting, sketching, doodling or making funny faces at people I don’t know just to make them laugh, point fingers or think, “Gotta go this one is making me nervous.”
You weren’t built to do one thing or you’d be the lonely person stuck behind the counter at the bowling alley shooting Lysol into the toes of used shoes. Even that’s art…to lay down a line of smell so good and continue reaching for the next pair of shoes is all about passion baby.
I’ve always wanted to be the voice on the loud speaker that says, “We have a pin jam on alley 5.” Or the announcer at a ballgame that calmly says, “Up next is #5 Phillip the Turnip Michaels whose batting average is two but that’s ok…he’s on the home team!”
I do though…suffer from a horrible disease I call Picasso-itis. Pablo Picasso loved to paint. He had a passion to sit and listen then allow the winds of change invite colors to chase the thin strings that make up a canvas…as much as one would believe he was in total control, I tend to argue because within his twists and turns and brush strokes so vivid there always sat a single, “What if?”
How do I know this? He had horrible amounts of problems with giving the art to its rightful owner. He clung onto it for weeks, years, months…always telling the owner, “When it is ready, I’ll share it with you.” Oh my God! This is so me! And we are far, far, far away from being the lone Lysol user at the counter of the bowling alley on this one.
Creating is the addiction. Setting it free is the foster parent that can’t let go.
One of the single most important hand painted portraits brought to the surface of the places I like to paint sits the image of a man and woman who are deeply in love, they are slow dancing, her smile resting next to his soul while his eyes calmly sing the words of a piece of poetry I had written to go with it:
How do I say goodbye when leaving is the new beginning?
How can I raise my hopes when everyday is something I can’t control?
Our time was a passage, time that was true.
Time opens the heart each day, sharing gifts in the songs we sing.
We’ve been through Heavens gates, been to Hell and home again.
Time is lost and found each day, an angel’s forgiveness in your soft kiss.
We’ve been through Heavens gates been in love and best friends.
Hey…let’s do it again.
Don’t take so long to find me…I’ll be the one holding kisses…kisses in the wind.
The ocean sits within our reach, her shores made of the sand of once living mountains. Time painted the path that which we now meet, set inside a sunset, where there’s nothing but music. Unmasked, we swim into the lost horizon, knowing one day, we will meet, on a mountainside, in a stream, preparing for the next journey. In our wings we shall hold, the lyrics of an unexpected dance…two wandering hearts we are no more, we have passed the tests of time and shall fly into an unborn tomorrow, never promising for everything we’ve been and shall see is a river fed by a guarantee…to dance.
Our time was a passage, time that was true.
I shall build a rainbow, made from God’s best colors, your eyes. Time is no uncaring fool, gave me a final dance to share with you.
I shall write in your absence, the words of two hearts vowing to dance. Before we’d sleep we’d always laugh…now its time for the final dance.
Hey…open your eyes…lets do it again…
Don’t take so long to find me. I’ll be the one holding kisses…kisses in the wind.
Arroe 1/30/10
And I don’t have the courage to take it from the walls to which I sit between to share it with the rightful owner. By writing about it and sending the words outward…it becomes my vision as an artist to grasp the reasons and or purpose of it being as real as a rainbow to hang in the heart to which it belongs. I only know how to promise Matt that it’s still on the way. Being the artist, I lack the inner strength to let go.
Art...it gets inside you and poof creativity is born. Don't be Picasso and hold onto something that might bring a smile to a passerby's day. Your job is to pass the message not horde it. As I let go...so should you and in the end there's going to be more room to create more art.
arroecollins@clearchannel.com
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