Everyone keeps chiding me for “searching.” Even the artists around me, who don’t feel/sound like artists. Who can’t even think of what to say to each other after a group show. Who pass YouTube videos around a table and stare at mini screens instead of having a conversation. Who hate everyone’s work but love every pop culture song, image, face. I keep thinking: Isn’t searching the point of life? A true life? When I complain, one guy here says, “I don’t care. I really don’t care. I care about being a good person and reading good books.” As if searching, love, thinking, and being a good person aren’t all tied. How can you get—do—one without the other? Why read if you then have nothing to say to another person? If you can’t use what you know as how you know. As a sharp-soft tool on the shit-world around you. I am losing my energy and starting to deflate.

Crossposted with Love Dog.

Image from Summer with Monika (1953).