I don’t tend to believe people when they tell me how much they love an individual artist. How they feel so strongly for the way this artist lived some amazing life and had some incredible story that fills their art. It must be my pessimism, or cynicism, or some other ~ism, I have yet to fully identify. But I simply don’t believe it when someone goes on and on about the life of some artist or musician.

People may love art, and they may love a song, or work of an artist, but I don’t believe people actually love artists and musicians. People love how they can imagine up an artist and her life. More so people love how they can imagine up themselves when they imagine up an artist and their life. Through their imagined artists, they themselves can be much more than they imagine.

It is perhaps a small triumph for artists and the arts that such a thing can happen.

It is perhaps like all love. It is not what is, but how we imagine what is, that makes things memorable and valuable. We imagine another through the one we meet. And through that other we imagine, we imagine ourselves as we could be. As we could be better than we are.

It is perhaps like art. We imagine up what might be from what is. Craft glorious illusions, from paper, cloth, rock, and the hair of animals. We create magnificence from what we have.

It’s not love, it’s actions, reactions, edits, and restarting.

It’s just like love.