So, I know it has been like a week since I posted. Thursday I was even more done than I was on Tuesday. I was tired of writing about being about being stressed out, tired, and not being able to write. I was at my snapping point. I love my family, but I needed a break. I need a break so bad, my mom asked me to call Tina Thursday night to see if I could go up there for a few days. (“Selina, I think you are just very close to killing one of us.”) Friday, after I drove Dad all over Chickasha but got a new monitor out of the deal, I ended up at Tina’s house.
Friday night, Tina and I ended up at a thing called The Second Friday with her little brother and his girlfriend. Apparently, on the second Friday of every month, the shops around the Plaza area stay open late, and the street musicians, performers, and food trucks come out. I felt distinctly old and uncool. Okay, I’m not going to lie, the whole thing was pretty damn hipster, but it was hipster in the best way possible. It was hipster in the “lets do something new and cool and try to be a community” and not in the “we are too cool for everyone else, let’s smoke cigarettes, drink bad beer, and talk about vinyl.” One of the things I love about Oklahoma is that we have these wonderful pockets of freak that you can accidentally stumble into.
Kyle, Tina’s super cool little brother, took us into this building called The Society. It seems to be a space for all kinds of artists to get together. There was some man singing and playing guitar. I have no idea who it was, but his voice was different from what we normally hear, but in a good way. On the wall, behind some bottles, hung a painting that made me almost cry. It is the first painting under 2007. Tina and I stared for a few minutes, but we moved on. When we were walking away from the building, Kyle mentioned the artist was there, and I made everyone go back.
When I finally got the artist’s attention, I started to try talk to him about this piece back in a corner, but instead I started to cry like a crazy person. I mean, it was almost the ugly cry. I was trying to explain how it was the perfect visual representation of the last two years of my life, but I’m pretty sure in my weird crying eloquence it was more “me like pretty picture.” The artist, Jerrod Smith, was very kind… and a little surprised. He was wonderful. Go visit his sites and go into his gallery.
Also, if you see, read, or hear something that moves you, tell the person who created it. Some people will be douche bags and treat you like you are crazy, but most will be happy they connected with someone. That is the reason so many artist do things, is to create a connection with others. I won’t pretend to be an artist. I don’t feel like an artist. I barely feel like a writer; I just claim it because saying “I run errands for my parents” makes me sound like too much like a loser. I do know finding out something I write means something to someone matters. Real artists put their soul out their in their different mediums, no mater how strange, in hopes someone will see it and go, “I see that, and I know what it means. I see that and I see you.”
Speaking of which, go check out Lunar Baboon for some awesome, sweet, funny, smart webcomics written by a Canadian school teacher.
Anyway, Friday night and Tina showing me Amanda Palmer’s new Ted talk has got my mind going again. I have many things brewing in my brain again. It might come to something, it might not. Who knows.
Thanks for sticking with me through everything. I will try to keep showing you, if you guys want to keep looking.
Geeks a Geeking