The patio door to my balcony is closed. Still, there is a breeze outside, evident by the tufts of feathers blowing around the grass. I often stare through the glass as I sit here, writing. Inspiration is usually waiting for me right outside it. There is enough inspiration to go around if one only managed to look at the right time. All art was an epic collaboration. No piece of it would exist without what was around us. All art was an act of looking. Art did not happen during creation—not that making it was not crucial; it happened when we looked. To be an artist, then, was to look around with your eyes wide open and your heart even wider.
As the haze, the fog of not knowing who I am is lifted, and as I begin to see clearer day by day, I am learning how all that has ever mattered to me is art. Art had little to do with what you made; it was how you lived. We had to approach life as a sort of artistic endeavour; else, there was little we could do with what we made—everything would be bland. There was more art in someone making the first cup of coffee than could ever be in a museum they visit with half a mind. At least, that is how I went about my days. It’s how I have always gone about my days. It is only now that I accept the purely aesthetic reasoning behind the way I do what I do—and when I say that, I mean how I live.
Doing things was living, and by saying that, I do not mean doing something for monetary gain or even worse, social merit, but for the heck of it. Doing things without an endgame was the only way we were meant to live. But, I could not be sure of others. The only instinct I have is to do things—to write these words, to think of ideas that never seem to work, to fail repeatedly. It was the better way. They often ask me: why do you write? Instead of answering, I ask them: why don’t you?
They never have an answer. I believe it is because they don’t look around, or maybe, they don’t do things. Perhaps, it’s even worse; they barely stop to think, and even if they did stop to think, they would still debate why they were doing it, and that was the end of it all. I write these words because I can and because I wish to.
Should there be another reason?