Dear Artist

Thank you for giving me this gift.

Thank you for your inspired interpretation of spirit. I know you don’t even know what you did or why you did it, and that it feels like a very shaky roller coaster sometimes.

I get it. I try

to make art too.

But I just wanted to say that I can’t do it without you.

You patience, your masterpieces, your catastrophes inspire me.

Make me keep going in the face of my own face looking back at me, with complaints, and ego-maniacal ideas of ways to get my needs met by sharing my most painful secrets with strangers who misinterpret and tell me to get therapy or to smile.

None of what is made is meant to be misunderstood, because it is not understandable.

I’m definitely not making art to fix things.

Get some relief maybe, pepper my interior reflections with some shift in perspective, but what can we make if we don’t have questions that we can’t shake?

How could I create without all of the open souls whose work says, I did this, cause I had to, and look man, you can too? What if you deliberate and question and never make that thing that weighs on your brain when you lay drifting into sleep state. How will I — ugh —rhyme — ugh — f* — I am blocked. The thoughts. Stuck. Like you. Please. move. let it through. I. nee. d Y.ou. 2 create 4 me = 2.

Here. Take my hand. Feel it move across the page. I don’t know how long it will stay, or if you will ever see the meaning that the combination of my words make, but my effort sends signals to the ether meant for you.

Like butterfly wings that become a tsunami.

Please create. Because.

I need you, and you need me.