luck Completed on July 28, 1998 Continuing with the self-deprecation, here we have 'luck'. Notice I didn't capitalize the l in luck 0 it's because of how little I was seeing in myself at the time. Something had happened - I could draw, but things felt empty. I thought deeply about this, and realized that having learned to draw (and having realized myself as an artist) had made me lazy in a sort of way. You see, the more I drew, the better I got at drawing. So really, all that meant is I needed to put less heart into any particular drawing at this point in order to make it 'good' because the skill of drawing could take care of it automatically. I was creating better and better stuff, but I couldn't tell you where it came from. And to me, that meant a lot. I remember on various occasions, wishing I could go back to May 20, to the point where I hadn't tainted myself at all with experience in drawing yet. At that time, anything that came out had to have been a product of nothing but heart, because I had no skill yet. As my drawing career went on, I realized I could view this as like walking a thinner and thinner tightrope, or I could just choose to live with it and try to be freer, allowing whatever comes my way to pass through me and out of me. As an artist I still try to maintain myself to that latter belief. I would have gone fucking crazy if I didn't. After this point, my artistic imperative sort of became a blur. I couldn't tell where that original window was anymore - it became a question of trust more than anything else. I was acting on remote. Who knws what might have been, if I had done things differently. But regardless, this is what happened.