September 23, 2024
A close friend of mine moved very far away, to an area where he and his band felt they’d be more successful. He met a girl, they started dating. I’ve never met her, but she hit me up one day and commissioned me to paint something that she could give to him as a gift. This is what I came up with. The text on it says:
Trying to make it in/as a pop punk band in 2019, as an artist at any time, or even just trying to forge a REAL, EMOTIONAL CONNECTION WITH ANOTHER HUMAN BEING (okay, I’m only half-joking about that last one) – it wouldn’t be unfair to say that you’d have to be pretty dumb to (1) believe that any of these were even potentially worthwhile endeavors or (2) to shape your life toward the achievement of such a goal. After all…
Q: What’re the odds that any of these things could possibly pan out at all, let alone in any lasting, long-term sense?
A: NOT GOOD.
But here we are, at it all the same. IT’S PROBABLY NOT GOING TO WORK OUT. There may well come a day when we’re forced to accept that it’s just not gonna happen for us. A day when we have to give up, scrap the dream, and just move on. And you know what? That’s okay. ‘Cause – in the meantime – here we are: taking aim, firing shots, and doing the shit we love. We deal with rejection, frustration, doubt, and more. But we also have fun. We get the highs and the lows. We’ve had more wild experiences and adventures than most people will ever even read about. And our shit’s real and it’s ours. We did it. Whatever happens, we’ve ALREADY WON. You can put that shit on my tombstone ‘cause, even if I die tonight, I’ll know I made it count.
Postscript
A few weeks after starting this painting (and just as I was finishing up), I got a call from my friend. He’d broken up with the girlfriend. He didn’t know about the painting yet so I didn’t mention it. I sent her a text and asked her what she wanted to do. She didn’t ask for the money back, she was just ready to move on. She didn’t really care what I did with the painting.
Very quickly, my friend regretted leaving her. When he tried to get her back, she wasn’t interested. (They’d been through this before). So now, he was the one who was “heartbroken.”
When it became clear they weren’t going to get back together, I figured it was safe to tell him about the painting. When he came to visit, I showed it to him. He teared up when he read it. But he didn’t want it. He said it would remind him of her and that was too painful.
CAN’T IT REMIND YOU OF YOUR FRIEND SAM INSTEAD? Your friend Sam whose art you love so much that your girlfriend knew to commission a painting from him?
Nope.
Whatever.
I’LL SELL IT AND GET PAID FOR IT TWICE.
This is one of the few paintings I made during a short flash of clean time in the midst of my extended relapse. It was one of the seven pieces that went into my feature at the Ringling Museum of Art in 2025.
