to burn for the sun

 To define is to limit, but an existence without definition is beyond human perception. Where do we find the meaning – where do we find proof of humanity?

And what proof do you have to show of humanity if not for art?

You tend to base off your sense of identity on a detail - something that becomes so definitive of the self that it becomes a weight that you carry. What are you if not the singular aspect of your personality you have decided to reduce yourself to? I've never been much for labels, but I think it is only human to define - and somewhere along the line I decided that if I were to be reduced to a single word, I would choose it and it would be 'artist'. 

Which is quite ironic, considering all that I've written or drawn in the past year is my inability to prove so to myself. 

I am quite new to writing - which still surprises me as I never wanted to write before, and now I've reached a point where I wish to study it in my free time. My poetry is clumsy, and my metaphors are recycled (does that deem me ill at the craft?) Icarus and his inability to reach the sun, Atlas and the weight he carries, and my personal favourite - Achilles. I weave rhythm out of these stories I adored as a child but now I find it repetitive, repetitive, repetitive. 

Maybe my life has been a futile search for the perfect medium of expression, but I have a soft spot for the unruly sketches I make. It has never felt enough – a picture tells a thousand words, but I always had more to say: never cohesive enough to be tangible in any medium. There was more to the drawing, there was more to the paper, and it rips apart and ink bleeds over and over and it is still not enough. 

To define is to limit – we try to summarize the human experience in paint and verse. I read a piece that spoke of how the mirror is the most twisted invention of them all – it teaches us to look upon ourselves as an existence to scrutinize, like we could ever be complete enough to do so (to define is to limit). We are meant to see ourselves reflected in nature because we are of her – in rippling water and still ponds, inartificial. The water cleanses, the metal burns. We are not the antithesis to divinity; we are of the earth, and we are the reckoning of the world.

Maybe it does not make sense – but I call it artistic inexpression. When there's something so deep within you that craves to be created but cannot be fathomed into existence. I think of failure, and I think of how I created art out of that too - divine failure, icarian pursuits. If you tried really hard, I think you could create art out of anything. So hypothetically speaking, I should've been able to create poetry out of not being able to write poetry. Maybe that's a paradox, maybe you’re running on fumes but anything so long as you silence the deafening anguish of trial and error. 

Artistic inexpression goes hand in hand with expression, I think. In all that is said and all that is drawn there is everything that comes between the lines, everything that cannot be summarized in any of the words you’ve learnt and called your own. In each attempt to capture all that is nondescript there is failure, there is proof that somebody tried and tried, there was repetition and there was failure. And despite how it may seem, I am content with it. 

Because to define is to limit and we are limitless – but it is still not enough. The experience of expression will not silence you, but your voice will not be enough to scream all that you wish to convey. Your wings will burn, and your throat will bleed raw, but you will be content with the failure of true expression – because in trying you have come close. You will be content at feeling the fire and the sea will satiate your hunger because in trying you have come close, and one day you might touch the sun.