to be alive

I make it into the studio armed with new music. I tidy up the leftover activity from the past Friday's session. Papers filled with oil, paint, and charcoal litter the floor. I put everything in it's right place. I put on my over sized painting shirt and my big headphones. I hit the button and I turn it all the way up.

The beat hits me at the base of the neck first and shivers down my spine. You know those shivers when something sounds just right. Surely you have felt those. My hands are over my head and my arms are crisscrossed so that my hands drop down to touch the back of my neck. The point of origination. The beat over takes me and I am jumping up and down on the industrial mat again in front of my easel. There is a new large painting in progress there.

This is happiness- I close my eyes to hold the feeling in.

Yesterday's sleep is gone and today comes in on a techno beat with a wall of crunchy noise. It will be this song over and over and over, on repeat today. This is how I operate. I am not alone. My painting starts to take shape, the inky paint runs this way and that- until I freeze it just so. When the painting needs to take a break I sit and write these words and they flow out and I know what it feels like to be alive too...