These Laurels Were Not Meant To Rest by Valerie Parente
Imagine, imagine, imagine. When the world is mundane I give it my passion another artistic era to rise from the ashes.
Create, create, create. People say I should be satisfied but I need to formulate an endless stream of words from this mental landscape.
Another rhyme, another day, another opportunity for artistic display. These laurels were not meant to rest, in this garden I’ll always progress, so ever-evolving, so evergreen, like the creativity that lives within me.
When you’re an artist they call it inspiration. When you’re mentally ill they call it exploitation. So how am I supposed to cope when I seek solace as both?
I wrote this poem, “Like Fine China“, without fully understanding what my subconscious was trying to tell me. After reading it a couple of times I realized the meaning behind the words. Fine China is the symbol for making art (something beautiful) out of sadness. The sadness is a constant cycle that manifests itself like patterns on fine China, royal “blue” (sad) details that I’ve etched upon the surface (my writing). When I have days that I break down, the porcelain breaks down, and I could use the jagged pieces of sadness to hurt myself but instead I choose to use them to build a display out of the broken pieces in the form of a porcelain vase (art from my mental breakdown) and there I show off pretty flowers (rhymes through poetry). The problem that arises from creating art out of sadness, sometimes sadness that a 3rd party might see as “old news”, is that these emotions I’ve recited are as good as dead to the world, hence why the flowers in the fine China vase I’ve built are decaying. The wonder in this, though, is that those decaying flowers offer me, the writer, solace. The cycle of sadness and creativity continues as the decaying flowers become a beautiful floral tea that I turn to for comfort as a grieve the ongoing pain I’m still in. Other people don’t see the benefit of the flowers (writing about perpetual pain), but I do. The entire process from fine china to a floral tea is cathartic, as is the artistic process, and in the end I feel okay and like I can survive my own mental state. Alas, a new day comes, the sadness inevitably returns as I am overwhelmed with reminders from the real world, and the pretty pain goes back to being “too pretty to comprehend” (commentary on not fully understanding what I was writing in the poem itself “Like Fine China”). Thus the entire breaking down of fine china (delving into an artistic outlet) occurs again.
Isn’t it incredible how art can be completely mindless but reveal something so profound in the mind it spawns from?
She is afraid of what it means to be admired in the physical way. And what does it mean to be a public display? The glitter and glamour of all of the fame or will she succumb to the pressure to hide away? What does it mean to be successful in this day and age when all your words are picked apart and everyone has a say? Because her words are her art but the public could always manipulate the words from her heart. Oh but how dare they? How dare you have an agenda, to destroy what others make? How dare you burn the books when you don’t like a phrase? How dare you take this world and demand it revolve around your name? Because we are all artists with a freedom to create and to censor what becomes popular will only lead to a world of heartache. Yes she’s afraid of making it to the mainstream but that’s a risk she’ll take because every story needs to be seen.
I worship through art
written word is my prayer
it is my recorded conversations with God
the art I make through my maker
and I am in love and in awe
of the world inside the creator
because the mental has spawned
when I transcribe to paper.
Matryoshka Dolls by Valerie Parente
