The Artist and the Carwash

I used to call myself an artist as if that were some romantic thing to be. That being an artist meant being this person with exceptional talent and insight. Now I think life is a lot like walking through a carwash. We’re all getting deluged with stimuli, slapped by circumstance, abused, blasted, hosed by a torrent of the daily, weekly, monthly, yearly facts of living. And often we’re asked, or ask ourselves, ‘What is all this?!’ Most people just shake their heads. How do you describe it? A few of us are able to pull ourselves away from it all for a moment and drag our soaking, bruised bodies in front of a crowd and vomit up a little bit of the water we swallowed. And that’s art. That’s what an artist is. Someone who’s been through the thresher of life and is able to stand in front of a crowd asking them ‘what the hell just happened?’ and cough up a small, ugly glimmer of it. A public invalid very indignantly exercising a bodily function.