Subconscious

I’ve written lately about my recent abstract paintings, and have said they come from my subconscious. If you’ve read my blog in the past, you’ll recall that I think about what it would be like for me to attend art school now, or to have had my present perspective back then. It would be a completely different experience.

This is from December of 1983 when I was attending art school in Detroit.

We’re coming up on the one year anniversary of my mother’s death. She saved all of my letters, and I got them in a package from my dad this week. It is so interesting to read the words written by a previous version of myself. It sounds like a different person. I don’t think or write the way I used to. Back then, I thought things were really neat. I still think so, but I don’t use that word. I had forgotten so many details of my life, so I am happy to have these letters as a reminder.

I’m still the same person. I don’t believe people change. They don’t change quickly, anyway. I see a transformation over time. Years and decades later, I feel that I’m unrecognizable as the person I was, but I’m not.

I had admirable traits back then. My judgement wasn’t great. My prefrontal cortex was not fully developed. I was insecure and begging for validation. Maybe I still am.

My parents see this experience at art school as the time I went astray, and that I am still not on the straight and narrow path. Not all who wander are lost.

I took a different path. I still carry all of these life experiences in my backpack, and now my own children are choosing their own paths. They don’t go they way I think they should. I worry about them, as my parents worried about me.

Leave a Reply