INSIDE THE MIRROR UNIVERSE (What Inspires)

 

What inspires you? Possibly the worst question to ask an artist. The grass might have some logical explanation to describe why it grows. Maybe the hungry dog can diagram why it’s interested in eating horse feces. What inspires you. Yes. What. Not a question. Consider what as a noun.

 

Let’s take a step back from this venomous charade. I never claimed to be an artist, nor do I revel in the notion that I know what my words mean. What. What it is. What is it? Is it what? It is what.

 

Flesh and emotion are the composite of nightmares and the imprint of causation; a glimpse into the mirror reveals sentences that exist only in your eyes, or memory. Each of us, behind a veil of self, is a martyr and a hero. How does art compose itself from hands or mouths, from hearts and blood? Letting words appear from fingers, a symbiosis of computer and palm, the mind bleed appearing as a metaphorical middle-finger for Descartes and all his resolutions, because he thought, therefore he was. What was he?

 

The motivation for causation, inspired by the ultimate what. “I’m a failure… Nobody is buying me books… I’m not making money… The reviewer doesn’t get ME!” Extend the martyr complex to Mount Olympus, where we wish to find ourselves, perched. Validation appears in the form of numbers, and those numbers validate an existence predicated on worship. “LOVE MY WORDS!” How grateful thou art.

 

Is it art if nobody sees it, or reads it? Is it art if nobody buys it? Are you defined by the words of others? What comes with money and fame? “The SUNSET inspires me…”

But does the sunset know it fulfills a purpose, that it’s a function of cognition?

 

Of what use is art when the martyr becomes a god? There may be nothing more to say, but there will be plenty to do and plenty to protect. Forgive those who want to change the world, for they are rebels; not revolutionaries, for we must look upon them with derision. Why do anything when everyone has already done it all? Why try anything new when there is no material benefit, no consequence or reward that can be presented like a triumphal arch over the city streets that long to be purged of your essence?

 

Once we have answers, we must find another question. Once we’ve colonized a continent, we must colonize the stars. Immortality is just a few million dollars out of our reach.

 

A beautiful woman inspires me, a beautiful man inspires me. A half moon, an empty moon, a desert on fire, a cave filled with the bones of dead explorers (liars, all). What is there to inspire. Not a question. Elm trees trapped in ice and shipped to Pluto; a football in the hands of a warrior who wasn’t supposed to walk; a woman who kneels for a cause that no longer exists, only to be branded a heretic in the name of that cause.

 

What inspires.