collegiate diversion

Why is it so difficult to convey the message of happiness over the message of sadness in art?

You presented to me tonight, the realization that so much of art is pure angst. Like those photo catalogs, you said. And I know what you mean. It’s like, a photo of a can of soup next to a plate of meat. This is not depressing at all. Until you put that artistic-bullshit-spin on it. Then the picture becomes an existential masterpiece that transposes metaphysical dimensions through personification. Now it’s like the meat wishes it could be canned, or the can feels the pain of not being free, and desires to become that nice slab of meat on the counter.

Or, there’s the fall back depressing artistic statement that become quasi-intellectual, semi-political: food shouldn’t be processed. And canned. It should be fresh, and pure and oh, so mighty.

I mean, really, think about it: so much of art is inherently designed to be depressing. Example? MAD = SAD = BAD. These words, they all rhyme together.

And what rhymes with happiness? Sappiness (which is plain useless), snappiness (which would be awful on paper), and crappiness. But there, look we’ve taken a turn, the inevitable ccle of slippery word that brings us back to the same loathsome expression.

Why is it so easy? But more importantly, we should wonder, is sadness easy at all?

Because, let me tell you, I pour my pain out. Hard, ON paper, IN written word. Through my personal essays. And if you think it’s easy, you just don’t what’s going on in this brain…

OR, am I taking the easy way out?

Example?

I write a nice love letter to my boyfriend, and feel retarded. Simple. Plain. Fact.

How pathetic.

And we’ve taken a turn for the worse again. Easy.

So here’s the issue, I have writer’s block these days, and maybe that’s because I cannot find anything sad to write about. I mean, are you kidding? Is like that ridiculously ironic?

“The worst thing being an artist could do to you is that it would make you slightly unhappy constantly.”-Salinger

Okay J.D., so now I’m not cool because I’m not angsty.

Why do we seek help when we need it? Why write the therapeutic-anger poem-when you’re angry? What about the therapeutic-happy poem? And why the hell am I bothering with these rhetorical questions?

Ah, and so the writer’s block continues.

I really love being alone in your apartment.
Not as much as I love being with you in your apartment,

but you have to trust me that it’s really nice.

I like wearing your sweat pants, almost as much as I like the way you fix my eyes with a tissue after I’ve been crying into it for the last half an hour.

It’s taken me a long time to feel like I could put out something intimate, and even longer to feel like I could write something absolutely exultant in the way I feel towards you.

Even if you don’t read this, it’s important for me to just say, I am trying my hardest to be happy with you. It seems really silly I think that a person would have to work so hard to keep you close, and even harder to keep you out.

I’m failing. And I’m glad.

Just driving from place to place and talking like we’ve been friends for much longer than we’ve been in love, I am happy to say that this morning I woke up in your apartment, first with your arms around me, and then watching you get ready for work, drifting in and out of sleepiness from the exhausting day before.

Perhaps my favorite time in the mornings with you are when you sit on the bed with me lying in it, and kind of linger over me, not in a too-close-claustrophobic-episode way at all. Rather, in a way that I totally have my space to wake from my dizzy consciousness, until my half-open eyes find yours. And you look absolutely amazing, and I feel amazing, just because I know you feel this way towards me.

“I think I’m in love but it makes me kind of nervous to say so.”
I know I’m in love.
And that feels alright.