“Ok, so now, why don’t you show me what makes you happy?”
Why would I be drawn to misery, to the worst things in my life, to pain and suffering? Why is that what I write about, what I think about? A question, barely articulated, by others in my life who have, at various points, been concerned about my mental well-being.
It’s probably a fair point. My work seems unrelentingly bleak at times. I don’t write about good things, everything is framed with this nihilistic resignation, but perhaps something is missing. I don’t resent this work, it isn’t painful to me, it is catharsis.
There are events, significant points in my life that have had a lasting impact on me. I can count them, turn them over in my head and plot a course through my existence – the events that define me, that make me who I am. At the time, some of these experiences threatened to destroy me. Documenting this, engaging with it, is part of constructing a whole human being, part of understanding myself.
I don’t imagine I’ll ever paint or write about what makes me happy. In truth, for all I write about sadness, emptiness, and death, my real happiness, the lasting happiness in my life comes from documenting these things, from standing back from the life I live and reflecting. It comes from a distance.
There are recurrent themes in my writing, echoed in my choice of subject matter for paintings. The ocean is a potent metaphor, so rich in significance, so much a part of our lives. When I am sad, when I am lost, I return to the sea. Happiness isn’t the right word for it, neither is sadness – it’s a resignation, the desire to lose myself, to stop being me, to forget.
It’s always about memory. There is no untainted core of me, no perfect being unharmed by the world, waiting inside, in the past, for me to uncover. The scars are a metaphor – I don’t remember not being scarred. They took my broken, malformed kidney fresh from the womb – I came into this world damaged.
This is the first event. My body entered, organs removed.
I remember the sea, I remember the sun. Nothing mattered there, this was a moment, frozen for contemplation, that I might return to time and again.
For what it’s worth, this is my happiness.
