Hamilton Art Crawl Induced Reflections on Art, Christianity, and Canada

I got home from the monthly Hamilton Art Crawl late last night, and woke up bright and early with a few ideas racing through my head.
..traded a copy of my book of poetry last night for the
above collage by Sean Gadoury from the Group of 7 Billion 
I've spent 17 years thinking and creating art and music and writing and learning computers and trying to be innovative, and never exactly thought hard about making money with art [follow my train of thought and learn my definition of art in a previous post] until recently (even though it's always been the thing that defines me). 

I'm realizing what a gift being able to do that has been, and how much my family and this decent society have given me. I've had to work hard all those years to make ends meet, and I'm still poor, but somehow I'm healthy as an ox, with a strong will, a clear head, a home to call my own, and healthcare. These are blessings beyond what I deserve, and so I figure I owe.

One interpretation of Catholic guilt could be when someone feels they were raised well, and they can't be happy unless they're working diligently on making the world as good for others as they have it themselves. Even though I'm not part of the church, I feel this so passionately that I press it on others and consider it a core Canadian value. The only hero I will ever truly need is Terry Fox, his life represented this value perfectly. If we could all be like him, we'd be an evolved species by now, we'd be star people walking on the topside of Andromeda, we'd live ten thousand years, we'd have wings. 

But never did an angel come to tell me that everything would be alright for me, that I was doing the right thing with my life working on my inspirations, on what I know is good. So if I want angels to exist, then I must be one then? Because I hear only murmurs in the streets, and there's no one left to tell me that my sacred visions and profane nightmares are not reality. The panthenon of cosmic dangers and invisible orders in my mind's eye are the only reality I can ever know.

I must make a life for myself from all of this, and teach others to do the same, so that we can truly shape the world. So that we may stop pretending that as artists our work should always fit in below the highest levels of media, and that we should be relegated to a corner somewhere, living off a stipend or a part-time barista salary. Do we need more bureaucrats in the world, or do we need more creative innovators? Even though I offer no solutions, I have faith a sea change is possible.

My scrapbook from the Friday the 13th May Art Crawl:

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