becoming an artist.
There are so many parts of my life I have forgotten. There are parts of myself I no longer know. That is terrifying. Art is meant to be life, but I have forgotten mine. How do you make art? I think the earliest memory I have is when I was five years old, and I’m often convinced that I made it up based on stories I’ve heard from that time. Memories feel like dreams anyways, half real, too vague, slightly unplaceable. I don’t have them at my grasp, I can’t reach them with my fingertips. I only know them when they’re jerked out of me, from the deep recesses, in the middle of conversations late at night or early in the morning or middle of the day. The time doesn’t really matter.
Memories might just be dreams. Both of them are composed of things that we think should not happen, should not be possible. A miracle. Life is full of miracles. Life is a miracle, and if life is art, and art is life, then art is a miracle. I think of artists as people who have different brains than mine, who paint on blank walls with splatters that end up in the shape of a childhood that does not belong to them or me. How do you make art? It’s a story in itself, even when they say it is a reflection. How do they decide what to make? How do they put their life into a museum?
What is my collection for the gallery? I have the first notebook I used to tell stories. I would pass the book around for my friends to read, and feel a glow in my chest when they asked me what would happen next. A small part of me thought that they might have been asking to be nice. My whole body was small then, so a bigger part of me than the one that resides now.
There’s a doubt in my writing–in my art–what is art? Am I making art? How do you make art? Have I been making it this whole time? Have I ever made it before in my life? Am I meant to decide?
I looked up art in Oxford’s dictionary.
art. /ärt/ noun
1. the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power.
"the art of the Renaissance"
Similar:
fine art
artwork
creative activity
2. the various branches of creative activity, such as painting, music, literature, and dance.
"the visual arts"
I imagine things all the time. Is the fifth generation of my Sims 4 family art? This is not a rhetorical question. I’ve been playing since I was eleven. Maybe ten. The ages started to blend together as soon as I was done with them, like my tweendom had to be discarded. I’m closer to twenty now than twelve. Will I throw these years away too? Or maybe I’ll just lock them in a box, only to be opened when I’m old, and a child, a child of my child, with big brown eyes that look straight out of a family album, asks me what my life used to be like. If I make it that far. I haven’t reached middle age, but I’m somehow always in crisis. I don’t know if I’ve always been this way. I don’t remember that far back.
I remember hearing that I had an old soul. I liked old music. I was mature for my age, the age being four. And five. And so on. Am I mature now? I feel the most like a child than I’ve ever been. I always wished to be older. I wish it now. But I hate it. The way everything falls on my shoulders. The way I’m alone now, for the sake of independence. The way the quiet is too quiet when I can’t hear the heartbeats of the people who used to hold my hand. The way I don’t know how to hate, because I was taught that I shouldn’t.
I don’t think I hate anything. I don’t know if I ever have. Hate is too strong, too poisonous. Hate is not art. Not my art, at least. If I have any. How do you make art? How do you make anything?
How do you make life? How do you make memories? How do you make dreams? How do you make a moment? How do you make something that you know you’ll remember forever? How do you know you haven’t already forgotten it? How do you make art?
