Just the other day I asked myself, “What do you want to be when you grow up, Art?” Here I am almost 90 and I still don’t have a good answer to that question. I often feel like a guy who wants to jump on a horse and go riding off in all directions. Simultaneously. I would. I’ve done a lot of that in my lifetime.. Focusing and remaining focused has never been easy for me.
Early in my lifetime I made the decision to give my imagination free reign. I hoped that doing that might preserve that feeling of going “Whee” like I was riding a roller coaster and really alive. A line in one of my poems which turned into a song says, “Let that little kid come out in me. Let me chase a butterfly, let me climb a tree. Let me mess my hair up and giggle out in glee. Oh Lordie, let that little kid come out in me.”
I never wrote to make money. Early on I wrote to stay sober. Later I wrote because I just had to write. Whatever was on my mind just had to be captured or perhaps I would die. OK, maybe that doesn’t make sense to a lot of people but making sense to others has never been a requirement in my life. I have observed that many creative people do not make much sense to most people.
So what do I want to be when I grow up? So, just where is it written that I must grow up? Like my poem titled Growth says, I hope to keep on growing Up! Up!
Up! Until the day I die.
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