The Artist's Way

Have you ever met someone and they didn't quite seem all there? Well, you probably met an artist. Either a author, poet, musician, painter, actor--some form of artist.

Growing up I thought I was simply different. Perhaps a little weird. My mind never seemed to be quite "right here". I made good enough grades. I have friends. My family wasn't all that functional, but then whose family really is when you're young?

It wasn't until many years later when I joined a writer's group that I realized my disease. I walked into a room of 50 people I had never met before and yet felt as if I had come home. These were my family. They were all like me. All never quite "right here".

So what makes me think of this now? As a paranormal investigator I spend hours listening to audio tapes. The most unusual one taken in my kitchen from one a.m. until six a.m. Why? Well, let's just say things were a little crazy around here and I wanted to know what was going on after I went to sleep. What will I do if I actually hear something? Heck if I know. Probably write it into another novel.

The mind of the artist works on images, dreams, thoughts and imagination. I wrote a story once that dealt with dreamers and the fact that I wasn't really here. I was simply the dream of a dreamer. Interesting concept and one that has been explored in other stories by other authors. Mine dealt with the fact that the dream watcher fell in love with one of the young women here on earth. Another concept that has been explored by other writers at other times. Each time someone hurt her--well, he woke up that person's dreamer, and of course they died. I'm not sure what I did with that story. Doesn't really matter. There are a million others rolling around in my head all the time. Which is why I'm never really quite here. The story ended with Caroline in a mental institution. She wasn't crazy of course, but to the world she was. She was singing a song:
"It doesn't matter what you feel,
Nothing is what it seems,
For we're not really real,
We're just someone else's dream."

For an artist dreaming is a way of life. We create our own reality with words and pictures. But most of all we feel. And those feelings must be expressed either in words or colors or sounds. Many artists are loners due to the fact they feel so deeply. Pain cuts so deep.

Sometimes I do feel that I'm not really real. That nothing is what I perceive it to be. And that perhaps I am just someone else's dream.