Bleeder

Funny story.

I got mugged last week.

Then my apartment got broken into.

Haha.

My mom tells me I have a weird sense of humor.

Everything's weird these days though. It seems that the direction of my life has gotten really dramatic. No middle ground anymore. It's always something really awesome coupled with something that really sucks. I get mugged, Sean and Jon come and visit me. I get to meet Sasha's family in Chicago, My car battery dies and I get a parking ticket. I have so little money that I can't buy groceries, but my friend takes me out to dinner. I like it like this. It's more interesting.

It's like I tell HyounJun every time he gets into one of my crappy 3rd generation hand-me-down cars for a long road trip: It's going to be an adventure.

What adventure would be complete without a twisted plot and agonizing losses, coupled with the eventual victory of all that is good, the restoration of the hero to his rightful place, where everyone cheers as he destroys the enemy, reunites with his trusty side kick, and finally gets to kiss the girl? That's why I don't worry when things go wrong. I hope for a happy ending.

Is that my story? I really need to get a side kick.

...among other things...

I probably should get a new wallet too.

The point is- 

Actually, I don't think I have a point. 

Well, maybe I do, but I don't think it's my point to make. Can you imagine if I was the one in charge of my story?

I was once "in love" (quotations indicate sarcasm, not towards love, but towards myself) with this girl. She was all that I could think about. I spent every weekend with her, and talked about her all the time, and when I couldn't hang out with her, I wanted to die. Smitten for sure. My friends were happy for me. They liked that I liked somebody. This was one of the first times that I ever thought that someone could like me, too. She also hung out with someone else sometimes, but that wasn't a big deal. We had this indelible connection. Nothing could possibly separate us. It was time to rearrange the alphabet and put U and I together. It was like a movie. If I was in charge of this story, I would be with her now. Who knows? We might even be engaged.

But I'm not. So, I didn't. She's actually with "someone else" right now, and I have absolutely no problem with that whatsoever. It wasn't really like a movie, now that I think about it. Well, maybe it was, but it was more like a made for TV movie. A Lifetime Original Movie, or one of those BBC movies starring the UGLIEST actors in the world, who somehow manage to not even have great personalities, despite their obvious physical shortcomings. Isn't it supposed to work like that?

Not that I'm calling her ugly.

Not that I'm not.

The story that is my life would be quite a small one if I were in charge of writing it. Right now it's a strange, often frightening, always complicated, rarely safe, never boring, completely wonderful and awe inspiring thing. It tugs and tickles. It draws tears and blood, and it makes me wake up in a cold sweat.

How wonderful. How marvelous. 

And my song shall ever be...

I hope my apartment gets broken into again. I hope every wallet I ever buy gets stolen. I hope that the woman I "love" leaves me for a ham and cheese sandwich on my wedding day. The pain grows our dreams. The crying, the waiting... they make men out of boys and warriors from cowards. We are cut in half and we bleed. We bleed and we grow. We see our bodies turn red, and that's how we know we are alive.

And the writer of our story just keeps on writing. Despite us.

Good. Maybe He can make something of me.

Aesthetics

I've decided that I'm an artist because of aesthetics.

It's not the easiest conclusion to arrive at. I've never really seen myself as one.  I've always thought of artists a people who have their works published, or people whose names are in galleries, people with a little hype or buzz surrounding them... people who get paid to create.

By that definition, I am not an artist.

I am a waiter.

I have been other things, of course. I have been a student, I have been a tutor, mentor, librarian, and bingo scoresheet salesman (Maybe I'll tell y'all that story at some other time). But artist? Artists have studios, artists have commissions, artists have the proper tools.

I don't even really see myself as a filmmaker (despite having a degree in the aforementioned practice). I just have this crappy camera tat I bought in high school, which I shoot films that I edit on a computer that my parents went halvsies on with me when I graduated from 12th grade. How can I be an artist when I don't have the proper tools?

I like independent films.

I like the idea of taking a dream or vision for something that you really want and doing it without anyone's approval/finding. I love when an indie film makes it out to mainstream audiences and all the big studio exec scramble like mad to copy its success. It's a bit laughable to see these quasi-independent ventures that are actually funded by the big studios trying really hard to act like they're part of the indie "In crowd." They make their films look dirty and gritty like the low budget films that they so love with the goal in mind to re create the "magic" of the other film's reception.

Why would they do that? Make things a lower quality than they are able, I mean...

Is it just because they are trying to fit in, or did they just miss the point entirely?

I think I have a few things in common with them, and I think that's why I never (until recently) saw myself as an artist. 

It is not the quality of the medium that is important. The weight, in fact, rests upon the quality of EXPRESSION.

The artist's tools are inside of him. It is not what quality and grandiose title that is bestowed upon the artist that makes his work worthy of our viewing. It is weather or not he is able to speak truth, and enlighten us about our own lives. 

Everything else is just a question of aesthetics...

Let me put it to you this way. If I gave Rembrandt a piece of paper and a 64 pack of crayons and told him to make something, he would make art. He is an artist, and no matter what the medium, he will create art. If I give a big studio, professional tools, and a 10 million dollar commission to the guy who draws pictures of penises on the walls of bathrooms, he will use those resources to draw a huge penis. Because he's a dick.

I can't judge my own work through the same lens as other artists. I think that's one of the biggest problems with human beings today. The "compari-sin" if you will... I am not the next Monet, or Picasso, and I will not any time soon be creating works like them. I do not have the resources (or more than likely, the skill) to make what they make. I may have just a piece of paper and a 64 pack of crayons, but I can create art.

Because I'm not a Dick.

Everything else is a question of aesthetics.