On Boredom and Art — A poem
A sad girl who laughs a lot has now become a trope. I feel very mainstream. I feel like I don’t have to defend myself more than I already do. I feel like I Don’t have to play every conversation I have with every stranger I meet, twice in my head. Like I don’t have to talk in metaphors, write dirty poetry or slow dance to an angry song in the shower. I don’t wonder about Freud and his mother in the dark anymore. I don’t feel the need to read Schopenhauer when I get lost in the sea of scholars. I looked at the Scream today, and didn’t feel like looking at that bald mulch of a face for more than a minute. Honestly, I picked my teeth with it and passed it along. When I think of gray now. I think of little dresses and I dress them in fairy lights. The city has become brighter and colder and the people, more obvious. Yet I don’t feel sad and bored anymore. I just feel sad. My sadness without boredom is dangerous. Is this what mother warned me about? Has boredom truly become the death of me? Or is the absence of it poisoning my well? I don’t know what will become of me without it. Perhaps an abstract of ‘me’ under the vacuum that is ‘you’. I’ve never needed my boredom as desperately as I do now. I need it so I can get my grunge hair and punk stench back. I need my boredom so I can stop getting hurt and start making art.
