Thursday, January 20, 2005

Lost To Me

Recently, in the last two years really, I started buying original pieces of art. Now mind you I am not rich or even comfortably well-off. But I've always loved art, not for art's sake but for the love and creativity that is put into a one-of-a-kind piece of visual creation. For me to own a piece of art and have it in my home is pretty darn close to what the artist must feel having created it in the first place. Being your every-day, work-a-day office laborer, I can't buy whatever i want whenever I want it. But recently I found out that a sculpture that struck me hard when I first saw it... was... bought by someone else. This is the first time that's happened and certainly, I'm sure, won't be the last. I'm amazed at the feeling. It's not just lost opportunity, like a movie I didn't get to see or a book I loved but can't find on my shelves. There is a finality to it. It goes deeper. Surprisingly so. It's amazing how art can affect us. Like a friend who's moved away, or rather, a friend who's betrayed you. I really thought he knew he was intended for me. But now he's turned his back on me. I don't know how I could have misjudged him. OK, I know, I couldn't afford him. And I had no where for him to live. But somehow, I thought he would stick around to work on our problems. Alas, just like a man, he's turned his back on me... When I saw him, I knew exactly what he was saying. The words were in my head before I could possibly have created them myself, so I know they were his words and not mine. Being an inanimate object, the words came out of his eyes not his mouth. He looked right into me and said them, only... I didn't think he was saying them to me. I was wrong. He always said the same thing, and now it's all he can say to me. "Laugh at me and never laugh again."

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