Forgive Me
I Must Be an Artist
As a kid, I wanted to be an artist. I almost had that desire beaten out of me when I was in high school, and again in college. But I think that I had more resolve as an eighteen-year-old than I did at fifteen. I’m not sure why I clung to that—perhaps because I’ve always had a very loose self-definition.
Sometimes I imagine this life where I was somebody more practical—and up until yesterday I believed that I really could force myself into that mold after I was finished being young and foolish. But I realized yesterday that I will be a fool in perpetuity. And there is freedom in that realization. Isn’t it awful that society has made me believe for a good portion of my life that artists are all fools? I’m glad to finally realize that ignorant notion and to finally become.
As an artist, I am most interested in the soul of humanity. The Human Spirit. Which I now consider noble rather than foolhardy. I suppose that with this piece, I am declaring what I have always been once more—and this time I will not have it taken from me. I wonder if this is nothing more than a desperate clinging—but at least is will be a desperate clinging to the eternal human soul. I know that it will persist long after I die—what cause could be a better investment of my finite and insignificant time in this world?
I wonder if a lot of people have had this beaten out of them. I must admit that I feel entirely useless in many other roles. But if society would just permit me to be an artist, I know that I could do it—I must. Perhaps I am past the point of asking permission and should just ask for forgiveness. To my family & friends, to society and those outside of society—forgive me, but I must be an Artist.
—transcribed from the artist book, Apologies: A Correspondence, Derrick James Cullen, 2017
