Artwork

Author's Notes: This was an essay I was assigned to write for English class. I felt like posting it here, for some reason. I guess eventually I realized I mean every word. So we were assigned to make our own version of "You Should Date a Girl Who Reads/Date an Illiterate Girl." So I decided to go with "Date an Artist."

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You should date an artist. It doesn’t matter what kind of artist – if they’re a painter, a musician, a writer, an actor, or a storyteller. The important thing is that they create, they see the world around them and present it in a way that no one else can. All that matters is there’s a passion in their heart for that kind of creation. You should date that artist because their passion in creating means they’re honest and can change the way you see life.

Some people think artists are crazy. They probably are, but where’s the fun in love if it’s ever sane? Some consider art abstract, that only the concrete things matter, and that music and paintings are only a luxury. Artists will believe otherwise, and occasionally they’ll be highly impractical. A writer may stay up all night to finish writing the next chapter of their novel because they genuinely believe their character is alive and they want to know what happens next, a musician can spend hours practicing their piece until they feel the music inside them. However, understand that even if art may not seem like the most practical thing in the world, their art is probably more real and more honest than most practical things in this world.

The expression they unleash shows just how honest an artist can be. You will see just how much an artist can feel, and how alive they will be when they’re inspired. And if you date an artist, you might be lucky enough to know how wonderful it feels to know that you’re the one who’s inspiring them. You might begin to see yourself in their art. Maybe it won’t always be blatant, but if an artist falls in love with you, you will become a part of them. They will want to share how wonderful you are to the world. They will share the heartache you cause them. They will share your most mundane and seemingly irrelevant habits. They will share the memory of you, because if you date an artist and he or she falls in love with you, you can never really die. Bits and pieces of you will have found their way into that art. An artist in love, quite simply, can give you immortality. They will refuse to let the memory of someone like you slip from minds and hearts.

But above all things, fall in love with the said artist as well. They deserve it, because artists are beautiful, in all their passion and dreaming. Learn to see the world through their eyes because once you do, you may never be able to see it the same way again. Listen to them and watch the fire dance in their eyes when they talk about the intricacies of their art. If you let them in, maybe you’ll begin to see the stories behind cracks in the wall, the mix of colors in a sunset, and the music of a restaurant’s mingled conversations. There will soon be more to life than just what everyone thinks of it, more than what is concrete and tangible, and more than what you can see.

They can do this because artists imagine. They dream. They hope.

But unlike others who might simply stop at that, they will create. They will always strive to find ways to create life with what they do.

Fall in love and date an artist because that is a wonderful thing to be a part of.

And if you get it right, you’ll realize that living life with the artist you love may just become your favorite artform.