The Mind of the Beholder

The Mind of the Beholder

                It’s funny. I have been having the urge to draw and create with color and image. The second I put pencil to paper, though I lose it all.

                What.

                The.

                Fuck.

                I suppose that for the moment I am “doomed” to paint my portraits with descriptive words and phrases. Some would wonder why I choose the word doomed, though. It is a conscious word choice.

                Drawing and painting an image with words leaves a lot of interpretation up to the beholder. Sometimes, most times, this is my desire. However, there are instances when I wish to convey something very specific and language is too damned ambiguous to get my point across. If I were able to print a photograph or video capture the thought in my head, that would certainly help, but I doubt that would actually solve the problem of my audience catching my exact meaning.

                The problem isn’t that I can’t find the correct words, though it certainly helps to have them. The problem isn’t with my audience “getting it” either. The problem is with me being able to understand that people will not think or understand things exactly like I do.

                No one’s perception is exactly the same. No one sees or hears exactly the same thing. Language is one of the more precise ways we communicate with one another because we have agreed upon the meanings of all these otherwise meaningless symbols (or, at least our ancestors did, and some bunch of teachers get together every so often and update it to put it together into a gigantic reference book), but even language can be perverted and changed to serve a particular agenda. Anything and everything is open to interpretation, even what we previously thought was cut, dried, and simple.

                The problem is letting go of the control of my work. Once it is out of my hands; once it is out there in the world, I can no longer control what feelings it will evoke in my audience. I will inevitably piss off my friends and family. They may misconstrue (or contstrue in some cases… hey, is that a word? If not, it totally should be.) what I had to say. However, if that is really a problem, then why the fuck am I even trying to do this in the first place?

                …Maybe because deep down, it really isn’t a problem.

                …Maybe because this is what I was born to do.

                I think it’s a problem because I think I am supposed to think it’s a problem. I am in my own way. Perhaps it’s time to get the fuck out of the way and let my audience make up their own minds about what they see. It is not my vision that matters, after all, but what my visions evoke in the mind of the beholder.

9-16-11