I spent yesterday morning painting. I was trying to paint an image of where I wish I were – in the springtime-green mountains of Colorado – instead of here, inside, sweating, as smoke swirls around us.
I spent yesterday evening reading Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. It has to be more than coincidence that sometimes I pick up a book and read a sentence that seems to have been written for me in that moment:
‘Have you ever made a scene,’ you said, filling in a Thomas Kinkade house, ‘and then put yourself inside it? Have you ever watched yourself from behind, going further and deeper into that landscape, away from you?’
My relationship to art – my need for art – serves a purpose something like that: getting me away from myself.
I’m constantly inundated by thoughts of my worth, my purpose, the impact of my actions, the importance (or lack thereof) of my work. When I’m immersed in art – whether it be experiencing art or creating it – I lose myself. I simultaneously think less of myself and feel more myself.
Art (and nature, of course) are places where I can just be. It doesn’t matter how I feel or how I look because I am nothing more than there in that moment. I become detached from myself in all the ways that are so often harmful.
This morning I finished my painting. I watched Ben Howard perform my favorite songs on YouTube. I read more of my book. I didn’t think once of myself.
