Let Your Crimes Be Many
As an artist, a lover, a devotee of your disciplines, let your crimes be many. Let them mock your bloodshot, bleary eyes and befuddlement. Let them flee from your rants, your tirades, your expositions. Let them wonder where exactly it all went wrong with all the things that were going right. You're not to live a life that makes objective sense. You're not to find the path of least resistance. You're not permitted to bow to falsehood and complacency.
You are called to your art, your expression, your song. You are called to hunger, to passion, to distraction. As a creator, a conspirator, a provocateur, let your crimes be many. Let your ideas and inspirations populate your days as much as beings of flesh and blood. Fall prey to your wandering mind, your distempered heart, your irrepressible urge to trace lines, words, melodies and notions across pages, or entire days. Pay little heed to the pattern and pace that works to subvert you. Forget the bitter and broken that are laying odds against you. Yours is a different pain, a different urgency that calls out to find life in the works of your hands.
As a father, as a friend, as salt of the Earth, let your crimes be many. Be outrageous in the love you bear others, the time and the patience you give freely, joyously, without question or regret. Abandon every distraction that dulls your senses and kills the spaces and silences that sustain you. Get to know and to nurture the companions, the obsessions, the desires and designs that were laid out to guide you.
Return to the well that sustains you, even if it leaves you weary, distant and distracted. Anyone who understands, who knows, will forgive you for it. Anyone who doesn't see the purpose, the imperative of your work, your art, isn't meant to. Theirs is a different call.
Leave them to it, as they will eventually leave you to yours, in due time.