Impressions

Writing is actually very similar to painting in some ways. Well done, Dragoness. You've found a common ground between two art forms. But I've never really thought of my writing as art, more like... I don't know. Something that just is. Occasionally, however—usually when I'm waiting for the bus and have nothing else to do but relax and pass the time by observing my surroundings—I feel the need, a kind of urge, to capture the scenes around me in a more permanent form. If I were talented at drawing and painting, or be willing to create such a distinguished form of art despite being chronically below average at it, I would happily carry a sketchbook with me and fill it with my artwork at the cold metal bus stops. But since I am neither the first nor the latter, I write. This does not mean that the moment an idea for writing strikes me, I grab my phone or a notebook and write it down, but rather that I observe the event with lazy detachment and then ponder the idea for days or weeks before forgetting it. I toss words around in my head, the sentences sound wonderful, but when I sit down to actually write them down, they often fail to capture the depth of meaning that the event—perhaps completely ordinary—left on me.

My writing is usually expressive: I most often sit down at the computer when I am experiencing emotional distress. Ideas, on the other hand, are almost always the result of something external, people's behavior, sounds, and smells. Occasionally, I combine the two, even if the draft text is distinctly impressive, I feel that I must add an expressive or at least moral note to it, because otherwise it has no function, is not worth publishing or even writing down. Quite a functionalist and capitalist way of thinking, isn't it? Everything must have a function. Even art, if nothing else, is important for me to express my feelings, to "let them out" and then diligently return to the job market; it helps me endure. However, I disagree with Wilde, who wrote:

"The moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of the artist, but the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium.
No artist desires to prove anything.

All art is quite useless,”

or with Gautier who claimed something in the lines of:

when art becomes political, moral, or useful, it ceases to be art,

because I simply don't think that's true. If I express my constriction in the world due to current socio-political and other circumstances through my paintings, drawings, this short (but ever-growing) text, or any other product, that is a political matter. But just because my final product is politically colored, or was even created for the purpose of protest or spreading awareness, that doesn't negate the fact that it is art.

Despite my disagreement with Wilde and Gautier, it would be time for me to occasionally send out some of my impressionistic—and only impressionistic—writings into the world. Perhaps in protest (oh, I've destroyed the entire meaning of the text and negated myself) against the idea that my writings must have a function. Please read the piece, the inspiration for which I got while freezing at the bus stop today:

I take a deep breath. I just missed the previous bus, and the next one is delayed. The air smells fresh and wintry, like my father's windbreaker when he comes back from a run. Snowflakes melt unusually slowly on my eyelashes.

The snow is dry and sparkling, and there is no slush on the sidewalk yet. I watch, mesmerized, as a middle-aged woman runs around a tree with her dog, kicking up dry snow so that each snowflake is visible as it falls back onto the frozen grass. The dog jumps after her, making sounds of crazy, primal joy, which we adults seem to have somehow forgotten through socialization. The woman laughs, stands on her toes, and reaches for a branch that is still too high for her to touch. She jumps slightly, grabs the branch, and shakes it vigorously, so that the snow falls not only on the confused but enthusiastic dog, but also on her black cap. Despite the many residents of the nearby apartment complex who are leisurely strolling, sledding, or rushing about their business, it seems that she is the only being around. And the dog.