Gatlen Culp
Stories (2/0)
The Masterpiece - My Struggle to find Agency
Your fingers around the pencil, the pen, the paintbrush. Trespassing, wielding a device not meant for you, but a god. Wielding so much power, one must be responsible with it. The weight of all the world’s authors and all the world’s artists pressing down on you. Such a small tool, such a small paper, but oh - what a large canvas. There are shoes to fill, expectations to meet. Not an inch of paper be wasted, not a drop of ink or paint unworthy of man be squandered on resources so dear. Guilty you are, sitting with the tools of the great… hoping you may be worthy to break the bonds of consumption and finally produce, to be a force acting on life rather than life acting on you. In a world of beauty and terror and great philosophy, do you have the energy to even scrape the likes of that which you cherish and envy? The world will see your work, your thoughts, ideas, and visions. They will judge you. Your simple, ugly pictures, devoid of meaning, mere noise and mediocre repetitive nonsense not worth a glance. Your broken, impractical designs, left to erode into the background of the life you wish to live. Your art is you. Your empty walls, empty journals, your mountains of tools. Unwritten words. Squandered materials that to touch would be to adulterate. It’s who you want to be, the designer, the artist, the writer, the engineer. You have all the tools, just do it. Isn’t this who you want to be? You are an artist without a single stroke, a writer without a single word, an engineer without a single design. Oh what a task, an expectation. How can you claim to love that which you don’t do? How can you claim to be the person you are not? Imposter. Weakling. Fool. All around you there is greatness. Even in the simplest of people there is a drive to create - and so they do. How joyous they are with their craft, their pleasure, their originality. Wouldn’t it be nice to have something you enjoy, something that makes you human in a sense… above biology through biology. Everyone feels the same. Elements in a world we will never understand but that acts and controls our rhythmic desires, developments, and behaviors through the generations.
By Gatlen Culp4 years ago in Psyche