Letter To a Young Artist

To my little friend:

I’ve been sitting in the living room table thinking of you for a while, just smoking cloves and wishing that you were here. I imagine us playing a game, just you and myself and a bottle of tequila. You’d ask me a question, anything you wanted to ask about my dreams or my life or my ghosts. I’d take a shot and answer your question, then ask you one of my own. You’d take a shot and answer, on and on until we were drunk and laughing or crying or both.

Sometimes I feel as though I know nothing more about you than that somehow we are very similar to one another. A kind of god or devil which runs in the blood of both of us, which I don’t see in anyone else. I think you must love other people with a passion they can never seem to understand, though you always think they do. I think there is a destructive fury in you that makes you feel peaceful and relaxed and that loneliness is a feeling you find hard to bear, but that you never want to lose. I think you crave to be cradled in the arms of one who does not exist in this world. That you want to be understood, but never explained. I think you are exhausted of running away from something that has hunted you for as long as you can remember.
If these things seem true then I believe we are neighbors on that dark planet you find yourself on when there is no one else around. Will it make your days better to know that you are not alone? Will it help you to find more things in this world to treasure? I don’t think it will, but there are things I haven’t said to you which must be said:

I care as much for you as I have for the closest friends in my life and this love will never be diminished by anything careless or destructive you’ll ever do. There are no rules you must follow. No expectations you must meet. You can relax in our friendship, it will always be there. And if you ever find yourself wanting to say things you may not believe in tomorrow, I’ll still listen, and if you want to scream at someone who won't think you’re insane, I am here. If you just want to sit without saying anything at all for a few hours, I won’t walk away.

The other night when you were home you had a three course pasta dinner with ice cream and a pint of bourbon chaser on the floor in the kitchen. I know because all the food was still in the pots on the floor when I woke up. Most people in your life have probably worried about how much you drink, but I’m not worried at all. I know that those are the nights when the devil who chases you has gained a little ground and you’re scared. It doesn’t worry me and it doesn’t anger me. I haven’t been there, where you are, but I’ve been to places like it.

What would worry me is if you gave up your race and your fear and your anger and decided to settle for happiness, a mundane happiness that is not earned but is decided upon. The advice I can offer you, as a person who has found temporary peace, is don’t ever be pleased with this world which robs you of your youth and your joy without giving anything back. Don’t ever make friends with happiness as it is an accomplice to boredom and old age, but also do not fight against joy, don’t confuse it with happiness. Joy is that feeling that overcomes you when you connect with another human being, or when your freedom inspires you to do something that makes sense. Joy comes with a sense of accomplishment or understanding or honesty. Joy is something you must embrace when it comes, though you know that it cannot last. Record it and remember it and relive it anytime you feel like it.

One last thing: You may not consider yourself a painter or a writer or an actress or a musician or anything, but don’t let that confuse you. You are definitely an artist in the purest sense of that word. There is a pressure in you, which will build and build until it destroys you and I am not exaggerating. The only way to relieve that pressure is to create. Create anything. Paint, write, whatever, and destroy it if you wish, but you must build a tunnel from yourself to something else to get that pressure out. Learning wont do it, traveling wont do it, they’ll only temporarily appease you.

You are one who was born to create, a rare disease I think, but it most certainly yours.

All my Love,
Sb