New painting: Huge Golden Church (and my feelings about being authentic and church)

A Huge Golden Church looming over a Woman in a Cage Curled Up like a Cat and a Man or Maybe an Alien Laying Beside Her

Man, sometimes it's so lonely. It feels like nobody understands what it's like, how good it feels when you're in it, when you are connected to whatever it is and there are no wrong moves, just listening and acting. All your impulses, everything you can dream, can happen there. There are some people who have never felt that. I know. I used to ask people all the time about it. All I got was dull looks. I'm lucky to feel it just about every day. There are days when it's not there. Luckily only days, not weeks. Going out, doing something different, helps. Sometimes the mall is helpful. People. Children. Lights. Rides. Food. Stairs. Lights. All humming, all buzzing, all pulsing. Life. This is life now. It was different before. It will look different in the future. But here we are.

You have to write. Just write. Doesn't matter how it gets out. Just has to. What's the most you can say with words? Watching riff raff, watching lil b, listening to The Fighter and the Kid. I wanna be authentic. I need to say what's real to me. This morning I was down thinking what can I paint that hasn't already been painted? What can I write...But I think the thing is to write what's true to you, your honest point, your honest view. No hold backs. That's authenticity. I think. It doesn't have to be sthg new. It has to be you. Authenticity is everything. I wanna work for it. I'd rather work on pushing myself and my mind and my art now than work for money. The world of words and colors and lines is wide open. To put feeling into things. A lot of people think or feel something and never share it. I don't want that for me.

The painting above is called A Huge Golden Church looming over a Woman in a Cage Curled Up like a Cat and a Man or Maybe an Alien Laying Beside Her. I've always liked churches. There's an energy there that's calming and peaceful. I can't explain it. There's a church nearby here in the neighborhood of Karlin. I've been in it a dozen times. I'm blown away by the fact that even though it's open to the public and there's never any security there, there's never anyone in there, no one steals anything, no one sprays tags in there. It's funny. You step outside and the streets are covered in ads and graffiti, but inside there it's clean and quiet. As physical places I think churches are great, but the spiritual role they're trying to play is tied to dogma. People like me love art and music and movies because they're not tied to anything. And that's freedom.