Musings and Tidbits

on pursuing the arts

Everything has a price, I suppose.

Maybe you're an optimist, and think of it as value instead. Everything has a value, you would say. And maybe that's why it is worth saving, or doing.

I laugh. What of value, anyway? It only stabs you in the back, cuts your hands up with its edges, and smiles with horrible crooked teeth. Anything you have of value is a price that you paid, and continue to pay.

And these words I scream into the void have no value. And yet I pay the price of repeating them, wrenching them out from my bloodstained gums, of its dissolving into the night. You can try to tell me that this, me, I have a value. And I would cackle until my knees gave out, and my laughs would turn into coughs, which would turn into sobs straight from my chest, where my lungs refuse to work.

And what is the price I pay, you ask? Surely there is no harm in something so tender as breathing, you say.

Maybe it's me diving headfirst into an ocean of paranoia, as my words intertwine with the wind, and I can no longer tell where my words end and the wind begins. Or the ice cold reality climbing down my spine, as I reach for alcohol to sterilize my mind. Or the dreams that chase each other as my eyes are open, as I rot away in the shrine to my self-hatred.

I never wanted to pay, though.

Maybe in a past life I was an optimist. One who thought there was value in the words that were carved in stone. One that cradled valuables to their chest, and passed them on to their daughters. Not whatever I am now. One who sees words as mere fluctuations in the air, or in the bits and pieces of bytes that do not exist in the physical world. One with no valuables, no name, and enough debt to spare.