5. i’d die for u to understand me
This was something I wrote in really big letters in my journal this past week. It’s first version was “I WOULD DIE SO YOU COULD UNDERSTAND ME.” The second version was “I WISH I’D DIE SO YOU’D UNDERSTAND ME.” I keep fantasizing about my funeral being this grand opportunity for everyone in my life to sit down together and discuss what they knew and loved about me and how this moment in time would somehow connect all the disconnected dots that make up the idea of me in each of your minds. It’s as if everyone has different bits of info and intel about who I am and what I’m really like and the only way to complete my puzzle is for all of you to share with one another what you know. Once you’ve buried me in the ground.
Like one of those true crime shows where the murder reveals the truth. Or a documentary about someone’s life that comes out years after they’ve died and finally brings justice to their name. Or how your favorite writer’s books only make sense after their personal diaries are released after death. Or how picasso had to die for you to understand his art.
One time, I as at a museum in San Diego and they had a “Post Secret” exhibition, which was one of my favorite websites as a kid. Part of the exhibit was the opportunity to make your own ‘post’ stating your deepest secret, live at the museum so I did. I wrote something down to the effect of “I fear I’m going to have to die for people to understand me.”
This is my biggest fear. I had always felt, every since I was young and creative. As a tiny artist, constantly taking in inspiration but not yet ready to make art - I worried that once I got to making my art, my perspective would be too hard to grasp onto. It’d be the product of so much varying stimuli, placed inside balloons, nailed to a wall, popped open with the throws of hammers and frozen in place as the paint dripped and left it’s mark.
That’s the trouble with art, that’s why is such a delicacy of vulnerability. The only reason the creative creates, the artists arts, the writer writes and the philosopher philosophisizes is to make sense of their own self. No one would choose this path if it wasn’t for selfish reasons. We do it because we have to. Because we have an undying need to understand every layer of depth we have by expressing it by any means necessary. We have favorites, of course, but at the end of the day creatives just like to create. Whether that’s with films, art, poetry or with the asking of questions.
We die for creative expression because it’s the only thing keeps us from wanting to die. It turns our depths into observations to be witnessed. It takes away the darkness so that we may be symbols of light for you. I hope you will start to understand me before I die. If you’re reading this then you already are, thank you for keeping me around.