We made love under the stars in a light, warm wind. Ray Charles, Norah Jones, Van Morrison and KT Lang on the ipod. Sometimes touch is soul stirring, the indelible imprints altering us somehow forever.
Later, watching city lit clouds drift across the sky, I found myself angry. I failed the only art class I ever took during my freshman year in college and I did it on purpose. The class was what I expect many art history classes are–dry, analytical, focused on art as historical record and evolution of technique. It was well attended by lots of girls in long brown coats and little make up. I didn’t go very often and when it came time for the final exam, I wrote a curse across the title page, screaming in a 16 year old voice, this has nothing to do with ART.
26 years later, I’m screaming the same thing. Only I do it, most often, silently. Would we let the critics and the historians walk into our bedrooms or peep over the wall of the back patio and assess our love making techniques, relate our passion to the historical moment, render us impotent by their very presence and objectify our love so that ultimately its expression is merely fodder for the competing academics?
It’s an interesting question. I still believe that art is profoundly personal and the debate over good, bad, and historical relevance is absurd in relationship to the depth of expression, the lover’s touch.
And yet, one has to live in the world. Even the best of lovers are only that good sometimes.
I want it all. I want the freedom to be the artist I choose to be. To move from controlled, playful touch to quiet, deep kisses and everything in between and have them all be part of my love making. My art. My life.
What makes a great lover? What makes a great artist? Who decides what is great and what is not and why would a lover or an artist let some critic determine that? A girl wearing a brown coat attending an art class later becomes an art critic, but her idea of art is only relative to her education. The classes she took in college blind her from ever experiencing the emotional kick to the face that a sculpture or a painting might give. She can only see it for its historical relevance and evolved technique. But why does this matter? A great artist has the humility to take any kind of dry judgment passed his way, because he knows it doesn’t matter. Great art, not unlike great sex, is determined by an individual, not by a mass comparative assessment. Confidence determines the difference between good and bad.