Love & Poetry

Love is a beautiful thing. And when love is felt by a creative and expressive person, that beauty is heightened. Suddenly the object of this person's love becomes their muse, inspiring page after page of poetry and prose. Short stories, paintings, songs. When an artist is deeply in love, the creativity flows and they become an unending well of inspriation, creating beauty every moment. It is a beatiful thing, sharing love with an artist. Being the inspiration behind so many beautiful things is such an honor and the greatest of compliments. I love to ruminate about some of the great acts of love I've seen in the art world. The tangible products of love felt so deeply. One of my favorites, Alex Katz Paints Ada, a series of portraits that Alex Katz painted of his wife over the past fifty years. So often our hobbies and interests are not something intwined with our relationship. They are often our personal oasis from everyone and deeply personal. When love  is felt so deeply that it crosses into your personal oasis, takes hold of your creative mind and propels you into whole new directions of art, that is really something special.

In my life I've been fortunate to have loved several times, and been loved several times. All of these loves have been so unique and so different from the next, which is to be expected. Some of my loves have been very technical people and some very creative. In my experiences, I know that the love between to creators of art, no matter how long it lasts or how bad it ends, will leave its mark forever. I can remember times of falling in love and writing feverishly poems about my love or writing poems with my love. Sitting together creating lines back and forth until together we'd crafted a sort of love-child from the lovemaking of our creative minds. Long after the love is gone, when communication no longer exists and even memories start to fade, the art doesn't. The poetry doesn't die, the portraits don't vanish. The songs don't stop being played. We can keep those loves alive through art.

If you can, create something with the person you love. Recognize that there is always a possibility of impermenance and this person may not always be here. Hold them in your heart and life forever by sitting together and bringing forth one thing into the world that wasn't here before. A craft. A song. A poem. Something you can pull out in the future and continue to celebrate a love that touched you so. I am so glad I've done this in my life.