please love me. please care.

the hole in an artist's heart

In high school, I had two dreams: to make YouTube videos and to play guitar. I was the lonely new kid in school and figured these were good ways to get some much-needed attention. So I wrote funny little scripts, daydreaming about the likes and subscribers I'd receive, and I begged an older kid in the rock band for guitar lessons, hoping his cool-cat aura would rub off on me. (It didn't.) These were early manifestations of my core artistic drives — I wanted to be seen, and I wanted to be heard.

These desires are, of course, perfectly natural. We're social animals. We all want to be valued; we all want to be loved. There is, however, a certain breed of man in whom, perhaps due to a lack of love during a formative period, this social instinct grows twisted and malformed. He develops a desperate need for validation, a hole in his heart that cannot be filled. Perhaps he becomes an artist. This sort of artist is no more than a street beggar, his work an ornately decorated cardboard sign. He begs for recognition. Each time he steps on stage, he drops to his knees and cries to his audience:

Please see me. Please love me. Please care.

I am this sort of artist.

The Guitar Player - Paul Gauguin, 1894

It's been nearly a decade since high school, and on the surface, I'm confidently chasing my dreams — I post videos on my YouTube channel and I play my own music on stage. But deep down, I still struggle with this need for validation. It permeates my art. On camera, I neurotically monitor every facial expression and vocal inflection, careful not to reveal awkwardness or uncertainty. On stage, I cower internally when I hit a wrong note or chord, bracing for the crowd's scorn and disappointment.

In other words, I have to wear a mask. I cannot make mistakes. I believe that to deserve love, I must be flawless.

It’s a nasty, poisonous belief. And it’s just not true — I know many of you champion me and accept me for exactly who I am, regardless of my flaws. Thank you. But when it comes to my art, I feel that if I revealed any weakness, I’d immediately lose the attention and respect of my audience. I'm realizing, however, that this is also untrue.

After all, an audience wants to experience more than just technical flair; they crave emotional impact. They want to feel something - resonance, connection, revelation. To witness a truth asserted so violently that their souls get caught in the crossfire. To observe, in high definition, the jagged edges of a hole in the heart. An audience doesn’t demand perfection. They want the human, flaws and all.

So to my audience: I'll give you what you want. I'll give you my truth, as well as I can tell it. I'll give you all of me and nothing more. In return, please give me what I need.

Please see me. Please love me. Please care.

---

---

👻 what I’ve been up to:

• NYC is cold and dry and depressing! I can’t wait for warmer weather. I spent a lot of time reading about writing - books like On Writing Well and Bird by Bird take the cake (though I would get roasted for using the cliché ‘take the cake’). I start a new job in a couple weeks and until then I’m going to read and write as much as possible. I found this really neat reading bubble by the Rockefeller Center (pic below).

• This week’s writing process was a journey - it started off as an investigation into the validity of digital vs physical identity, but while questioning my own motivations for posting online, I ventured off in this new direction and scrapped the original essay entirely. It feels like one small piece of a greater body of work investigating artistic drive and expression. There might be a Pt. 2 coming.

  

  hot tea, kindle & chillin in a bubble