Like Mike
June 16th, 2020
Starring: The Artist (26)
A studio apartment. It’s been stripped of all decorations and essentials, outside of a couch and a television. In the center of the room, a majestic hunk of white marble. The Artist, in pajamas, stands under the slab, dwarfed by it:
THE ARTIST
This is a bad idea. But all bad ideas come from good places, so it can’t be that bad. That’s my rationale.
This bad idea came to me in the form of a vision. I am assuming it was an artistic vision, because I had never felt anything like it before, and I had never felt anything like it before because I am not artistic.
I am not artistic because I chose to live my life as a banking data analyst, and to master the art of banking data analysis, I had to euthanize my will to be artistic.
Well, until now. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Last Sunday, I turned twenty-six years old.
The only thing that seemed significant about it was that my brain had officially stopped developing. It stops at twenty-five supposedly, and with that, I no longer had a valuable life excuse: “I’m still growing.”
I had lost all my baby teeth, and the last permanent was filling in. No going back.
I celebrated by riding this train of thought straight to the nostalgia station.
I turned off my phone. I watched cartoons in my pajamas until dark. I ate Frosted Mini Wheats. I got a tummy ache, but I didn’t care. This was twenty-six.
My vision began sometime during my sixth bowl of Mini Wheats, as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle marathon morphed into Spongebob. Michaelangelo was engaged in a serious nunchuck battle with Shredder, and then...there was Michaelangelo. Just a different Michelangelo. It was the Spongebob episode where Spongebob has this huge chunk of marble in front of him, and he taps it once with his hammer and chisel, and out comes the famous David statue.
By Michaelangelo.
And I was screen-delirious, hopped up on sugar, and in the midst of a depressive episode, but I got it. I knew all this time, I wanted to be an artist.
I wanted to be like Spongebob. And Michaelangelo.
I wanted to be able to look at something that’s totally not there and then...make it.
I googled how old Michaelangelo was when he started the David. It said twenty-six.
I googled how long it took Michaelangelo to make the David. It said two and a half years.
I googled a lot of other things I never thought I’d google.
And here I am.
...
These are my rules of being an artist:
One: I never use google.
Two: I take two and a half years.
Three: My muses are cartoons, and I only eat Italian food.
Four: Any time I forget that I’m an artist, I have to tell myself out loud.
And Five: Make something, so I can make something of me.
This is a bad idea.
I start tomorrow.