well, one piece of bad news is that this painting of mine from a long time ago was damaged in the hurricane that hit my parents’ house; it wasn’t great or anything, just an oil painting of a bangladeshi landscape, but still, it set a mood for me in my old house

but anyway, i must say that anyone who works in art will tell you - the best art creates itself; you just don’t know where it comes from; the best poems wrote themselves - i just held the pen and let it flow out of my brain; the best lines come out fully formed; and a long time ago, i had this one drawing - i am so stupid, for some reason i get it into my head every couple of years to throw out everything i own, so i actually got rid of this! but i miss him so much

i was 16 or so, i remember i had on this black sweatshirt, my long hair in my face, and sitting on my bed in my room - it was in the middle of the night (ever notice how all the greatest ideas you have are in the middle of the night) - and was sitting there with my sketch pad; now i am no “real” visual artist - i definitely have more idea than skill; what i lack in ability i make up for in style or concept; i dabble in everything, though, and i definitely enjoy it; well that one magical night it so happened that while doodling, i started sketching this man - he was so perfect, i can’t tell you; basically, he was at the side of the page, and he was staring straight at you; he was insane, and he had a lot of hair - a full moustache/beard, and his hair was fairly long and unkempt; he was middle-aged and basically came off as some crazy homeless guy (i remember seeing a guy sort of like that at a clinic once lol) - anyway, it was a cool picture, not only because of the reality of this guy but stylistically the idea was cool because his hair sort of represented his insanity and so i starting scribbling it in and it was like a cloud that meandered into the background - it actually took up more space than his face (this part i consciously did) - but the man himself - i really don’t know how he came about, because you see, i was really bad at drawing men (in those days i mostly drew people) - if i ever drew a man, he would just look like a woman with facial hair or something - but he was definitely a man, and quite real; he looked right at you and you felt you could actually see through his eyes into his world; it was so cool

anyway, i was for the millionth time lamenting his loss and wondering if i could re-create that for one of my drawings, but as anyone can tell you, if you ever try to re-create a drawing, it is a miserable sham and is never quite what the original was and it’s hopeless (unless, i guess you are a real artist and have enough ability to painstakingly recreate an original in a scientific fashion, but i’m not); so i basically decided to keep that as a memory and not attempt to do something i couldn’t do anyway, when i stumbled upon a very cool idea - and it was so awesome, but my concepts are usually way out there and very hard to pull off (i tend towards surrealism, because i find realism plain and purely abstract stuff absurd or pointless) - and of course nothing ever comes out exactly the way you want it, but i exerted myself enough and went with the flow enough (the life of the art itself) and was VERY HAPPY with the results! and it didn’t even take long, which is a marvel - i don’t know what anyone else will make of it, if they would find it competent or even interesting, because it is a very personal, symbolic piece for me, but i love it and i’m so happy and grateful!!!