Why do I do what I do

[Emily Block]

I am Emily. No more, no less. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. I draw. I build. I sculpt. I write. Sometimes I eat, drink, and sleep too. But only sometimes. I’m not particularly good at what I do, merely decent by most standards. My multi-legged chromatically challenged sculptures and drawings of unidentifiable creatures can attest to that. I’m not brilliant at painting, my sculptures wont bring you to tears. My drawings could be little more than the doodles of a distracted mind. One that likes flowers and weird avian creatures. I’ve tried to stop. I realized the drawings and paintings around me look fantastically better than mine. My inner critic grew horns and informed me that my humans do not, in fact, look like humans at all, my trees are like prehistoric creatures, and my animals are like strange chimeras from a 13th century bishops nightmare. I thought perhaps I should dedicate myself to other ventures. Put away my pencils, hide my copper wire and leave my sketchbooks on a shelf. Perhaps I’ll be a diplomat, a chemist, I’ll eliminate world hunger. I might, still. But its hard to imagine brokering world peace or creating a chemical compound that will eliminate hunger when all of my notes lie squeezed in the margins, lounging under massive leaves and primordial roses, being screamed by twisted figures and eaten by the creatures that more comfortably fill my papers. I tried to stop, really I did! But my hands have a mind of their own, it seems, and the minute I took pencil to paper instead of “why Nixon resigned” instead appears an aging politian conversing with the daemons emerging from his own hair. So I put down my notebook and pick up my laptop. “How can you doodle on a computer screen!” I taunt my hands. “Now you will be forced to take decent notes! To put away all of these strange figures and instead concentrate on something I might actually be good at!” But under my fingers instead of the chemical reaction that explains the interaction of sulfur and silver rise metaphors and similes, epic battles and gauzy gardens pungent with the smells of love filled dreams. I gasp at my meager poetry and stare astounded at my hands. “Can’t you just obey! Cant you just do what I ask, what I want to do- what I should do, at least?” They seem to laugh at me. They take down my sketchbook and pick up my pencils. They urge me to draw and to sculpt and create and destroy. I do what I do because I cant seem to stop. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.