When I sit down to draw, I always get the feeling someone will come by and ask me
Not kindly or blindly, rather just to go finding and digging,
At my biggest insecurities which happens to be centered around
The one thing I want to assume is my own.
"Hey, are you an artist?"
To which I'd reply with a dour snap, 'Whatever gave you that idea?'
Was it because I'm drawing when I could be doing something else?
Focusing on my future or putting my priorities on top shelf?
Was it the way I can't focus, or how I just don't listen because I'm too out there to even come to attention?
How I always seem off base in my own little world, or the way my expected career has every chance of becoming a worst case scenario?
I'd snark and sneer, then back to doodling in my tome.
Just drawing, drawing, drawing, to try and stay alone.
But people won't leave once they've sunk in – their curiosity like daggers
Growing inside a crocodile’s mouth clamping down shut on the question
jaws so strong – with inquisitive inflection
"Hey, are you an artist?"
And it's always here when the mask starts to cracking,
When I lose all my footing and destroy all my backing,
Because I know I'm not Bill Watterson with his Calvin and Hobbes
or Stephen Hillenburg with his early run of Spongebob.
I know that I have no experience and I know that I do know nothing.
I have a long road ahead and too much to learn, and the road I'm on will likely end in heartache and spurn.
I don't know what's going on.
I don't know how I'll get ahead.
I don't know if I'm cut out to play in the leagues when I'm still a kid
Stuck in diapers crying and bawling and brushing my tears off like window wipers
Because I know I'm not special and I know I'm not grand, but that's not gonna' stop all that I have planned
'Cuz I know the only person I'll ever be better than is the me of the past.
But even the feeling of being better than myself- even that won't last.
"Hey, are you an artist?"
The answer to this question
Well, I just can't quite say, but I might as well be one for the ones that say
They don't know who they are or what they want or think they're cut out to be fighting against this undercut current
Mob of ingenuity and genius
That flows out and throws out the especially good creators to go start something of their own.
I know I'm no Studio Laika with its four feature length films,
Stories of kids who deal with a world not quite ready for them
Just trying to get by whilst feeling like outcasts
Only to go and deal with a malignant evil.
I have no interest in the slow-moving stop motion locomotive
Although I constantly wait around hoping my motive
Will slip down from above the sky to drop like rain into my hands so I may finally have a solid plan
Of what I want to do.
But no one watches me to see what I do,
And no one ever comes up to construe
My thoughts or ambitions.
So I manifest like a plague waiting and hoping that someone someday will come up and ask.
-When I put # 2 pencil to flimsy white paper,
I realize # 2 is the biggest honor I'll never understand or claim for
I think to myself how much better it would be
If I had someone to share these thoughts with
Before I lose them and intake my next breath.
But I know in my heart of hearts –
As I fall from all of the charts I've ever even aspired to be on –
That someone's never gonna' walk by to ask me
"Hey, are you an artist?"