Art was a baby before the boy, but helpless and more hungry. The work, just like a fetus, would suck out the life force of desire and spit back bone and tooth. My thirst to make, to raise from dust something out of nothing, existed long before his beautiful and willing nucleus began carving out my flesh to make a body. Everything in me before him had been selfish and frozen, a glacier unto myself. I lived on a precarious live wire. No one knew when the shock would come, if they would get burned or blessed, if they could trust anything but the art. Words rose and fell like waves, I chased them like a surfer rides the ocean, they conquered me or I took them. My arms were childless and ready to write, my head unstuffed with Sage’s urgent demands. My body was free of his marks, but my insides were all frozen and my heart was sore and empty.
My art was shit before the baby.
I had ridden the amusement park pregnancy, vomited after every ride, took home all the crap I could buy. I wrote letters to myself, letters to the baby, letters to the future, lists of things To Do, and took notes on the parenting no-no’s of my past. Birth came and went, leaving me humbled and barely human. The last thing I felt capable of was imagining beyond the baby, focusing on me. Every creative force I possessed became fully burdened with my new and delicious creature. He sucked it all out of me, till I heard “productive
