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

For 17 years i’ve tried to think independently, create art and music and writing and be innovative, and even though I’ve always thought art is the thing that defines me, I’ve never thought hard about making money with it.

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 stuggling, but somehow I’m healthy, have a strong will, a clear head, a home to call my own, a healthcare system. These are blessings, 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, I press it on others, and consider it a core Canadian value too. The only hero we really need as Canadians Terry Fox. His life represented that value. If we could be like him, we’d be an evolved species. We’d be star people walking on the cleaner side 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, or that I was doing the right thing with my life. So if we want angels to exist, we must become them then? I hear only murmurs in the streets, and there’s no one left to tell me that any of my sacred visions and profane nightmares are not reality. The pantheon of cosmic dangers and invisible instructions in my mind’s eye are the only reality I can know.

I guess I should try to make a life for myself from all of this, and teach others my arcane way. 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 this world, or do we need more artistically creative innovation? I have no solutions, but I have faith a sea change is possible.