Byline: Strawberry Blunt

Buford Youthward
stockcap@hotmail.com

It's hard to write honest.

To crack that nut you have to spend a lot of time drafting and working through variations. First word, best word is not always the case. The process for simplicity is complex. In that respect writing is lifelike.

There is comfort in the routine, in doing what has been done, replicating experience and behavior, knowing what's required to get what's desired.

I'm not quick to dismiss the labor or time to row down the river or run down the road. Getting up and getting on with the mundane is not only mandatory but meaningful. It's all schooling. Education is a process, realization a goal.

These long stretches of banal activity are not unwarranted, not without reward. No matter how slow it goes, an action doesn't create a reaction so much as it eliminates a possibility. And that's what living is all about, exploring the liberty of limitation, deducing options and sometimes, merely going through the motions.

Life is edited for the sake of memory. Patches of color stitched alongside yards of grey and oh how that color feels when it hits. The excitement of fireworks makes up for so much overcast. Like the old business adage, a little success makes up for a lot of failure.

The lucky ones find some recognition and feel the pleasure in living the words that others speak or write, basking in the glow of already knowing, bathing in the waters of an affectionate affidavit. Sipping coffee, guzzling texts, pinching ideas and rolling them in a strawberry flavored blunt.

Contributing to a document that keeps finding its time is a thrill like no other. Regardless of the project's scope, the personal impact is magnificent. Stories, nothing more than timed information, frame all of the knowing, all the perceiving.

The hero's action told in exaggerated fashion, conjured and recited fireside charges imaginations with possibility and promise.

And though graffiti kids live in a world of exaggeration, their voices are pure honesty.


Read more in Byline

Art Crimes Front Page