We live in a mass, administered society. The cultural industries produce assemblyline entertainment that is triage for wage slaves. Half of your brothers and sisters have below average IQ’s. School is a medium-security prison run by, as my father said many times, “the stupid kids.”
It’s time to get rough with this reality.
A blank canvas or an empty page is for you to fill with your real self. Not your false self, a false self that mandates that you plan, edit, re-write, think about it, and proceed carefully, in order to produce a realistic, sentimental, kitschy, consumer-grade piece of shit that garners you praise or $5.00 from the kids who rolled their boogers in algebra class.
Move beyond that. Flow.
It does not go well if you even have a vague idea of what you want to say or do.
You can’t even think, vaguely, “I’d like to paint something that feels like what I just saw driving up the hill this fine autumn day.” The real self is embarrassed by even this degree of restraint.
Instead, think something like, TEAL, and then let teal fly.
And go from there.
It will build. Add colors, words, ideas, shapes. Don’t worry about what it looks or sounds like until you’re done. Stop censoring your life.
Do you get a bonus prize if you hide all your life? Is there a booby prize for being “nice”?
We’re all close enough to death, whether we’re 30 or 50 or 70, to stop pulling our punches.
Let it fly. PLAY. Make it meaningful play.
This is counter to everything we’re taught in school.
But think about it. School is designed by and for teachers, who want to – must – make everything vital and fun more like work and drudgery.
Why? What would they do all year (well, summers off, of course) otherwise? Hand out tubes of Golden’s Teal paint and yell, “Slap it around, and take it from there, see how it goes!”
So we end up, instead, spending our next 50 or 70 years following orders, buying approved crap from “influencers”, those mouthy booger rollers from our past.
It’s all about giving up control. Give up control, and see what you’ve been hiding from yourself.
