When love meets art
I approached K for the first time in April, she was strumming her guitar and humming one of her songs, sensitive, funny and blindingly self aware.
I suspected we shared similar viewpoints about the complicated and personal concept of “ambition”, especially because we are both women who want to break out of our assigned roles by society. We talked about work and life that day, but the conversation continued, she read my poems and essays, I listened to her music and suggested we sell her paintings online.
We forged a strong bond over glasses of wine, snapchat, and music. What I’ve learned about her over this short period of time is that she’s extremely comfortable in her own skin, the ups and downs in her past relationships have made her strong and decisive, but while always wearing her heart on her sleeve. I love that her probing distraction in life is not at all at odds with her love of art, music and mezcal. She is candid, curious, sensitive, fragile but firmly opinionated.
Sometimes she walks into my room after a long night out, grabs a bottle of whisky and strums her guitar, sometimes made up melodies, sometimes Alanis Morissette. Sometimes after endless drinking she cries for her nephews, I just hug her and promise everything is going to be okay, that growing up is part of life.
We dream about where we’re going, who we’re going to become, what we could do together. We fantasize about the future, about how easy life could be if people could just learn to love and respect. We’re scared, we have nothing but bills to pay and work to do, we have nothing but everything at the same time.
I think of K’s talent and generosity as a gift life has given for me to cherish and grow. I think of her when I can’t find sense in time or the meaning of my existence. She reminds me of maturity, a word I hate, because it means admitting to our own craziness and being deeply embarrassed by who we are. She reminds me of our human vulnerabilities.
She understands me and my art, and loves both, the highest hope one creative soul can have for a union with another.
