Last night I dreamt about the shape of things and how the shape of things can twist into something new. Something unnameable. In the dream, I was an artist. I drew a rudimentary but colorful still life of flowers in a vase, and I was almost proud.
But then I turned around and saw I was in a classroom full of other artists, much better artists. Displayed on each of their easels were beautiful, fully-formed landscapes a la Monet or Cézanne. I was heartbroken. Surely, I had failed. As the teacher walked towards my easel to examine my artwork, the shame was hot on my cheeks.
Without a word, the teacher took my painting from me, and with water and wide brushstrokes, she transformed it into an intelligent and brazen abstract work. As I write this, I can feel how beautiful this art looked in my dream, but I do not have the words to describe it.
I am not typically one for making meaning out of dreams, those half-lives of the conscious mind, images living in our subconscious combining into absurdist, usually unexplainable stories. But if I were, here is interpretation number one: Never a genius, but on the cusp.
Interpretation number two: More than a new perspective, I am in need of a new method. Should the end goal not be originality? Should I not be taking bigger risks?
Interpretation number three: I am chasing the impossible.
See, in real life, I call myself a writer. But often, I have a hard time calling myself an artist. I suspect this is a common phenomenon. Yet just as often, I compare my own writing to a collage. Pulling bits of lived life and experiences together, along with flourishes of imagination, to create something new. Sometimes, I hope it is reflective of reality. Sometimes, I hope it asks a question. Generally, I hope it stirs an emotion.
I want to write the shape of things, whatever that may be. Some feelings cannot be evoked on the page, and it is the work of either a hopeless romantic, a borderline narcissist, or some combination of the two, to try to express with words where language fails. Still, I keep writing.
Cheyenne this is beautiful!!