first draft of 'songs on rage (my beautiful darling rage)'

 

(I prefer black ink – it always felt classier. The transition between writing and sketching came easier with the same dark ink. It glitches for a second on the paper – black to red, viscous like blood, blood? – before it goes back to midnight-ink, a shade of the sky. Hair, maybe. The sound is far more important, however. The repetition of the scritch scritch scritch has always soothed me.

I picked up the pen, my hand shaking. Black ink, midnight ink, inklike hair and blood and all of it together – absent of the sound. Where was the sound? I must’ve run that pen till it ran dry of ink. The sound disappeared without warning. The sound always disappears without warning.)

I put down the pen a long time ago. Or at least, a version of me did. It is not like I gave up on my craft, I tell myself. I would never give up on my craft. And even if I did, I was just the sort of pathetic to come back anyways.

But why wouldn’t I give up? The red glares at me, so vehemently so. The answers have always been crisp and sharp – never vague like the prose I hide behind. It is the author who refuses to acknowledge it. Think, look – gaze down past the reflection of yourself you’re fixated on. What demons haunt you? There are far too many words you remember, far too much the voices repeat like a mantra. Tread carefully.

Authenticity is artificial.

And there it is.

Authenticity is artificial – you are not who you are. ‘Authenticity’ is a perfectly curated identity wiped clean of any real art. The world dictates what is acceptable, you are meant to mimic the classics, after all. Because surely, great art has nothing whatsoever to do with an emotion so big and all-encompassing you create a new language for it?

This blog so childishly marked as ‘musings on art’ has been a fool’s quest all along. There is nothing so volatile as art.

Or rather, there is nothing so volatile as the artist.

The counterargument is feeble. Why do you bother with your excuses? Why wouldn’t I? The mind may forget but the body remembers like clockwork – repetition having engraved grief so deep within the skeleton that your bones are held together by nothing but a dead child’s tenacity. I can pretend to be peaceful – I have spent my lifetime bracing myself – but where will I place my rage?

This word that I keep repeating sickens me. I ran so far ahead; I forgot to teach myself how to live. I survive on repetitive actions, clinging tightly to whatever words I learnt. Art, art, art – who is this nameless deity I keep crying for? I stopped believing in a god when I was 11. This word sickens me. This world sickens me.

You want to know of authenticity? Ink on paper, blood on canvas – you are the most despicable thing I have ever seen.