Tag Archives: banksy

Stop Asking For Permission

My husband bought me this sweater as a gift, maybe
you've seen this Banksy print before
it inspires me
because
I picture myself as the girl in the picture
running around spreading the message
to keep doing
creative stuff that you love
no matter what  

Even though I feel like I'm standing
in the middle of the desert
blaring a loudspeaker message
only a passing iguana might hear
I don't ever shut up
I want you and I to achieve our goals
I don't want you or I to give up

I waited most of my life
for other people
to tell me it was okay
to go ahead and publish my writing
to record my music
to share it with others
But they never did
So I had to tell myself
it was OK
and it is

What if We All Just Started Creating Stuff?

Everything you’re doing is wrong. You don’t need that. Whatever you’re currently using is stupid. Get this instead. You’re not (thin, fit, happy) enough. Try it our way – for $29.99 – instead.

Everyday, we are surrounded by adverts, signs, bumper stickers, magazines, newspapers, stores telling us what to buy, think or do. How can a person even be themselves any more? How do we even know what our self, as a concept, the eternal “I”, is?

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Which Way Do I Jump?

Do I want to infiltrate and work inside of an organization already set up for me? Do my time? Establish contacts and network? Or do I want to cut the ribbons outside of the structure, find my own zen. Establish my own hours, rules and boundaries?

(photo credit Dandeluca)

These things have been set in motion for us, without any of our input. Join an organization. Work for a company. Do your time. Make contacts. Move ahead of the game. Join the rat race. Work for peanuts doing what you love in a prefab job set in motion by years of people who followed the so-called rules. Get a real job. Accept the facts for what they are. Don’t look at the crumbling artifice, the kinks in the chains.

Dance to your own bagpipes. Call the shots. Work for peanuts doing something you love outside of the structures set in place to straighten you out and grow hair on your chest. Motivate yourself by yourself with your own talents. With your own language outside of the box. Maybe be poor forever.

What’s a person to do? Can you be artistic in any job these days? Is the very definition of art newness, anti-conformity, living outside of the fence? Being a lone tiger in the jungle, hunting for errant prey not already captured by the lions who call the shots?

Should we live in prides or roam alone?

These are the questions I ask myself as I apply for jobs, a crap shoot really. Jobs that have been manufactured by someone else. Jobs I must fabricate myself to fit into. I keep looking for something that is ME. But I come up empty handed.

There is no rule that defines me. I haven’t built the edifice I belong to. I’m hanging on the edge of this precipice, looking out over civilization, trying to aim my feet so that I land in some area where I can find my people. A place of my own. But whichever way the wind blows. Or if there is no wind. Or if I slip, and tumble down into the brambles, with no flashlight and no tools. Just a shovel.

Which way do I jump?

That is the question.