I Live In a Museum: Let Me Paint You a Picture

It's 6:52 a.m., and the maintenance man for my apartment building has just smiled at me and told me to have a great day at work. He's never seen me or spoken to me before. He doesn't know my name. He doesn't know what I do. And he doesn't have to. What he does know is the important stuff- that it's 6:52 a.m. on a Friday, and there's still dew on the grass from the chill of the night, and that the littlest efforts towards a human connection matter. You don't have to know people to be kind to them.

It's 7:15 in the morning now and there's a young girl standing on the corner waiting for the bus. I can't help but wonder where she's going or who she's meeting. I wonder why she's alone. I wonder how far she walked to get there. I wonder what obscenely early hour she must've been up at, or if she even slept at all. I wonder if anyone has made her feel happy yet today, and doubt it by the way she keeps her head down and seems to be making friends with the damp ground.

It's 7:41 a.m. and I've just slammed on my brakes because three scruffy-faced men with cigarettes in their mouths decided to run out into the street while the light was green. All three of them turned immediately to look back at me as if it was me who had made the dumb decision instead of them, so I smiled in return to signal a kind of lowkey "let's just agree to be glad that this didn't end badly." As I drove off again towards my office, I couldn't help but wonder what the three of them were up to at 7:41 in the morning. I couldn't stop myself from being curious about how they knew each other, and what drove them to smoke, and whether or not they had anywhere to go. I wondered if they were high, and if so what they were high on, and what had happened to them that made those highs worth chasing. I wondered what their day was going to consist of, and I wondered if maybe they wondered that, too.

I wondered how many weird looks the young girl and the three young men had been given by anybody and everybody else. I wondered how many drivers have almost run the men over and flipped them off or cussed at them under their breath. I wondered what kinds of lives these people lead beyond what they were doing in those brief moments, and I wondered what all tends to goes through their heads. I wonder if they're okay even when they're laughing and I wonder if they need help even when they say they can handle it. I wonder if there's anyone who lets them cry into their shoulders, hard. I wonder if they have any place or person to come home to. I wonder if they tend to bite their tongues, even around people they claim to love, for fear that if they speak their minds, the love won't be there anymore.

I know. I've got an awful lot to say for someone who stays pretty quiet, huh? Most of it stays in my head, and I'm quiet because my mind is that kind of loud. You know, the kind of loud that makes your ears ring and your throat sore. The kind of loud that keeps blaring even in rooms that are almost deafeningly s i l e n t. The kind of loud I didn't know how to calm until I picked up pens and notebooks and started writing down everything I thought and felt that nobody else cared about. That's the weird thing about being quiet, I guess. Nobody knows you, and nobody wants to go to the effort to get to know you. They think that because you're quiet, you don't feel things and because you don't outwardly express your opinions, you must not have them. At least that's what I've gathered for as long as I've been "the quiet girl."
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That was a really long way to explain that I'm a humanity fanatic. I've always savored tiny moments that other people have always overlooked. I've always had a sixth sense for tension and every emotion that exists. I've always been hit with the, "why do you care?" question when I express interest in pretty much anything, and it alone has almost broken me time and time again.

Why do I care? Why do you not? Why are you even asking that? Do you know me? Do you know how much I hate that question?

I care because I do. Because it's who I am. I shouldn't have to and most definitely won't go to any effort to explain that to you. My interest has always been and probably always will be in other people. So much of what I'm naturally passionate about is beyond the scope of what is relevant to my own life, and because we live in a world where being self-absorbed is the norm, I don't blame you for the disconnect between us.
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One part of my childhood that I will never forget is the looooooooonnnnnnnnnng walks through art museums with my mother. I hated them. I hated them because as young as I was, I didn't yet have an appreciation for the museum experience. I didn't understand why we were paying to have to silently walk through room after room and not really do much of anything except look around. There was also a lot about art and life and the world as a whole and humanity that I wasn't old enough to understand back then, and I like to tell myself that that's the reason I didn't value those hours and those silences more than I did. 

Instead, young me walked as quickly through each exhibit as I could, briefly glancing at each piece and criticizing everything- but especially the abstract stuff. The abstract work never made any sense to me, because I knew that almost anyone would be capable of creating it. I have a very specific memory of one particular afternoon, when my mom and my brother and I discovered a room with only three square canvases in it. Each one was a different size, with a different solid colored background, and a single random streak or mark of some kind somewhere on it. 

I remember it because it made me very angry. "This shouldn't even be here," I told my mom. "This isn't even art. Anyone could do this. I could've done this." 

The next thing I remember is the way my mom let a few seconds of that deafening silence sit between my last words and her next ones. 

"You could've," she said. 

"But you didn't."

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But you didn't. But you didn't. But you didn't. 

Those three words got beaten violently into my brain that day and have echoed in me ever since. She was right. I had no reason to criticize somebody else's art when they were the brave ones for sharing it. That's when art museums stopped being so much about the art itself to me. Suddenly they weren't just about the silent strolls and crowded walls anymore. They weren't about the odd and seemingly effortless abstract work being worthy of the same wall space that housed pieces by Van Gogh and Jackson Pollock. They were the world on display. They were life in pretty colors and fancy frames. They were places where freedom of thought and feeling and expression were highly encouraged. Places where everything had value. They became safe havens to me, where it seemed like someone was holding a mirror up to the entire world all at once and saying, "This is what it's like to be alive, this is what it's like to feel things deeply, and this is what happens when people are willing to share themselves."

The more time I spent in them, the more I felt alive.

Thank you, mama, for the long walks through art museums before I was ready to appreciate them. Thank you for the lesson that being an artist is as easy as sharing my work with the world while others don't. 

I wish I would've listened better longer ago, but better late than never.

And thank you to artists who put their souls into their work no matter the medium. 

Thank you to the writers who create the stories we get invested in. 

To the musicians who dream up the beats we groove to.

To the photographers who capture moments so they can be held onto forever.

To the painters who turn white space into masterpieces.

To the dancers who use their bodies to tell stories without opening their mouths. 

To designers who somehow always know where things should go.

To children who believe they can grow up to be anything.

To advocates who fight hard for whatever they believe in.

And to anyone who is brave enough to do what they love and be who they are because this world makes that so. damn. difficult. 

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Creativity is rebellion in this society. 

This society likes to lead you to believe that you have to do things a certain way, at certain times, and that if you don't follow those rules- you're wrong. This society allows you to compare yourself and your life to the lives of everyone around you through a screen that fits in the palm of your hand. Do you understand how insane that is? This society assigns a letter grade to you in subjects you barely scratch the surface of and tries to make you believe that those letters spell out how much you're worth and what you're capable of. 

I'm here to tell you that all of that is absolute bullshit. You don't have to follow those stupid rules. You don't have to look like or live like anybody else. You don't have to get the best grades to be successful. 

Do what you love. Be who you are. 

It won't always be easy.

You won't always be respected for it either, and that can be tough, but at least then it'll be clear to you who is worthy of space in your life. 

Any good artist knows that the best part of creating is the process of it rather than the final product anyway. Okay, maybe not necessarily the good artists, but at least the ones who make art for the right reasons. The ones who do whatever they do because they have a genuine love for it. The ones who would rather put their hearts and souls and everything they have INTO their work instead of doing it for the sake of getting something OUT of it. 

Being creative as authentically as I possibly can is my favorite part of writing, and it's a standard I strive to maintain with everything I produce. It's a standard I strive to maintain as an artist, a human, and a humanitarian. 

I demand that from art and I demand that from life. Authenticity. Passion. 

All of my work is emotionally charged and there's a reason for that. Anyone could write about their life in place of me, sure. Anyone could do this. But I want to do this work, live my life, and love my people in a way nobody else could ever even come close to. I want to do it my way. I want to tell you my story. I want to share my wild mind with you.

Part of that means being honest with you when I'm struggling, like I have been lately. I've been pushing myself to publish this post night after night for weeks. Without fail, every night, I've had to close my laptop and go to bed having made little to no progress. That changes now. 

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a letter to young me now that I know better and to you, whoever you may be:

you won't like all art and that's fine. nothing in this world was made for everybody.

what isn't fine is hating on something just because it doesn't speak to you.

you won't like all people, either, but be kind to them.

there is so much of their stories you don't know and there's a lot more to them than what you see.

You get it now, right?

That art museums mirror life?

You're living in one, where the art walks and talks and has a heartbeat you can feel if you get close enough. 

The museum is open around the clock and around the world.

Look. Touch. Run. Experience. Learn. Live. 

When all is said and done, you won't want to be saying you could've. 

Starting no later than this very moment, live your life in a way that allows you to look back and say that you did.

xox