Jean-Michel Basquiat

Basquiat....Another attempt at the impossible—

If it's all gonna end, then what's the point? Why do I want the things I think I want? Where is all this coming from? I feel that feeling again. It's a melancholy pull from somewhere behind space and time. It's a gravity, drawing on me, neither from behind, nor ahead. Is it what happened that night in 2013? Is it coming from a past life or a future existence? I suspect, it's somehow both.

I feel beyond; beyond this place, these people, this body...this Universe. It's so hard to make sense of such a strange sensation, but its refusal to leave me demands an attempt.

I was standing on a deserted prison basketball court in the rain tonight, and suddenly I felt connected toJean-Michel Basquiat. For an hour; until my clothes were completely soaked through, I stood there in a corner of the court and listened to Amy Annelle, trying to make some sense of it all. Sometimes music is more than just music; sometimes—at its best—it is your own personal soundtrack. I went out there frustrated and angry, at nothing in particular, just being the embodiment of something else; something heavy and important; something beyond words and even thought. I stood out there and let the misty rain baptize me through my prison blues, listening to my soundtrack.

I didn't know what to make of it...What it means-still don't. I breathed deep cool breaths and stayed present. I refused to flee into the past, or take shelter in the future. And still I don't know what that feeling means—what any of it means. For as long as I can remember—it’s been there, and I'm no closer to understanding what it is. I tried to write about a single dimension of it in "The Calling" A tiny glimpse, of a limited angle, of the unspeakable, the unthinkable...only through experience can it be known, and even then, it's confusing.

It feels similar to nostalgia. There's a part of it in beautifully sad songs and movies; a hint in heartbreaking stories and poetry. These things hold the closest relationship to what it is I'm speaking of—except, the Source is so much heavier and deeper. It is a perfectly meshed pairing of pain and beauty, appreciation and love, heartbreak and gratitude, darkness and light. It could be the color of infinity. It might be all there ever is and ever will be, all the beauty and loss rolled into one personal dimension that bleeds—from somewhere beyond—into the center of your chest. An emotional gravity that holds everything together; something we're not supposed to be able to tap into; something we're not equipped to deal with. Maybe my wires are crossed, my antenna bent... It feels too big, too immense, too big-picture to fit into any understandable context.

So I came in, soaking wet, and with no other way to deal with it, I did the only thing that grants me a touch of relief from the indefinable...I started writing. And I know it doesn't make sense, and probably isn't worth reading, but this is what came out. Maybe there's someone out there who understands. Maybe everybody knows what I'm trying to say—maybe not...

Everything of substance that I've ever written are just pieces in the debris field of this feeling; it's all just a byproduct, an attempt at pointing at something; at accomplishing the highest goal—to describe the indescribable.

Every artist has been its messenger. Every piece of art; another bread crumb leading back to Source. Whitman came the closest with words...maybe Emerson—Shakespeare tried as well. Jean Michelle Basquiat's brush tried to paint us a map...

And until someone succeeds, we're all just attempting the impossible. 

The imperfect Art of perfection... 

And now I can breathe a little easier.