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A letter from the artist as a young man

Posted By Chris Matarazzo On In artistic unknowns by Chris Matarazzo,family & parenting | 6 Comments

Dear Mom and Dad:

I’m trying to figure something out. See, I think I am an artist. I draw pictures in notebooks and people say I am talented. “So talented,” they say. I have this feeling they think I’m great, but I’m pretty sure I’m not that good. I’m just better than most of them, which doesn’t mean I am really talented, I don’t think.

The other problem is, I don’t want to be a poser, but it’s hard. I find myself wanting to walk around carrying a guitar case or with drumsticks in my back pocket so people know me better just by looking. I’m not real good on either instrument, yet, but I want to be that guy who makes music. The one everyone knows about.

The thing is, I’m not there yet. I’m pretty sure I’m not going to be one of those guys who grows up wishing he had stuck with music, but I’m afraid it could happen. I’m more afraid of that than anything in the world, to tell you the truth.

I know what you are going to say. You’re going to tell me to work hard, take lessons and practice. Take art lessons if I want it bad enough, you’ll say. (Like you always do.) But I don’t know if I have it in me. Seriously. Let me try to explain it this way:

Sometimes, I listen to music at night in bed on my iPod. The stuff I hear breaks my heart. I really do want to be able to play like Hendrix, not like some of my friends who learn a few lines to metal songs and think they can play. I’m talking about really playing, like those amazing acoustic guys I see on You Tube. I also want to be able to write epic songs. I want to so bad, it brings me to tears sometimes. I hear this stuff and there’s this ache and then I’m sure that when I wake up the next day, I’m going to sign up for guitar lessons or really commit to my drawing and start painting and stuff.

But then it shuts off, somehow. I don’t know how. If I could keep it burning, I know I could do these things. It’s weird, though. I wake up and everything just looks so lame when I’m standing waiting for the school bus. The feeling is just gone, almost like a dream you can’t remember all the way.

It’s kind of like the day after you sit in the dark and watch a horror movie. The night before, when you’re into it, you believe there really are ghosts and you shiver because you are sure you really see them snaeking around in the shadows in the corners, but in the morning it’s completely different. You know ghosts can’t possibly exist in a world that has sunlight.

It’s like that with the music that makes me cry at night: in the morning, when I’m waiting for the bus, everything changes. Then there’s no way that the magic I heard the night before could possibly exist in a world alongside homework and with sloppy Joes on light green, plastic cafeteria trays. Even if I have that same great music playing in my ear buds, it’s like it turns, right away, from the most powerful thing, ever, into noise to block out everything outside my head. Then I wind up thinking through it instead of listening to it like I do in bed at night.

Just . . . could you please stop telling me I’m lazy — that, if I wanted it bad enough, I would work hard and study music and art? I do want to be an artist. I do really want it. I swear.  I’d rather die than ever give it up.

It’s just so hard. Maybe it’s too hard for me. But I’m really not lazy. I swear to God, I am not lazy, so please stop saying it. It just feels like the job’s way too big.

Love,

Your Son

Chris Matarazzo’s ARTISTIC UNKNOWNS appears every Tuesday

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Chris Matarazzo [4]

Chris Matarazzo is a writer, composer, musician and teacher of literature and writing on the college and high school levels. His music can be heard on his recent release, Hats and Rabbits [5], which is currently available. Chris is also the composer of the score to the off-beat independent film Surrender Dorothy [6] and he performs in the Philadelphia area with the King Richard Band. He's also a relatively prolific novelist, even if no one seems to care yet. His blog, also called Hats and Rabbits [7], is nice, too, if you get a chance...