Art makes you want to talk, good art makes you want to try, great art makes you want to dissolve. Think great thoughts. Do things you haven’t done. Push that little bit harder, get off the bus, and walk into that place with the dark and purple lights and the cute girl you keep seeing every so often. It makes you get out of bed, makes you open the window, makes you see everything a little bit differently. You’re hard on yourself, then you dream. You scrape yourself, then you’re by the ocean on Copacabana Beach, watching the slim hipped young soft skinned things float by, as you sip your cocktail, and unexpectedly find it moves you. That sweet thrill, that sharp taste, as you wonder how many phone calls led to this moment. Which time meant the most, which time meant the least. You watch, you dig your toes into the sand, and then there’s that one second. The oysters on the boulevard in Paris, the first time you saw him naked, the first time you realized putting your foot down meant everything and potentially nothing. That’s what art does. You see yourself at the edge and it’s the stripe of color that put you there, the last sip you took, the flash of the sun going down by the council flats, when you think of the story she told you. It’s that touch of skin that hurts, that blister of skin when it boils, the meadow in solitude, bisected by an animal who didn’t expect you either. It’s all the moments you pray you remember forever, that form larger cuts in the celluloid flash past that will be your last thoughts before you stroll down that beach.

And if I have to spend my whole life sucking up and lying, at least it’s not here.