Lately
I have come to think that creativity and madness are closely linked.
But I suspect that it may just be me. The madness needs a place to
go. To lose or compromise the inner eye, for me, is a kind of suicide
in itself. The hold of self dashed by the vulnerability of allowing
someone in.
There
is no confusion of who I am while I exist in that moment of creation.
It is another place. An entire separate reality. And no one else
exists in that world.
I
protect that world jealously. This is why I cannot need anybody.
What's
in a name? Maybe everything.
So
maybe this is why.
If
the self is lost, can anyone exist without ego?
If
all is wrapped up on a self-made identity, what happens when it has
become infiltrated? I am me, I am mine. I belong to me.
I
don't need anybody.
Something
ugly lashes out when that insulation feels stolen.
***
Without
looking for it, I stumble on a picture of Bran's wife..... putting a
face to a concept. It was on his website. I was just looking at
something he messaged me about and it was there. A picture of them
together from only a month ago. Around the time he met me. And in the
picture they look so happy! --as if no two people could be more in
love. Did he want me to see it? How could he not know it was there?
It
is now tattooed into my retinas and I cannot get it out. I cannot
stop thinking of them together, cannot
stop imagining things.... I imagine them kissing.... fucking....
explicitly. It is in everything I look at and everything I do. I
am too old for this. I avoid my phone. I have let the battery die. I
hide it in the back of a drawer. I don't look at my email. I belong
to me.
His
voice, his eyes,that haunt me.... must be exiled because now
he is the enemy.
I
paint for twelve hours without stopping. Work on the Demeter mural
that is six feet by four. It takes me to that place. At least here no
one has access. At least here do I trust myself. I stay up and work
on Demeter through the night, and don't sleep, get high off of no
sleep. Don't eat. I enjoy this torture. It shows me that I have
mastered myself again.
Again
silenced. Mute. Mutation. Mutilation? Amputation.... adaptation. I
can find my way again. Ego, id and me.