The Great Itch

"Salome Acts", by Tim Holmes

I'm constantly churning inside with an nameless desire inaccessible to words. It is a subtle inch: constant, nagging and somewhat specific; but forcing it into thoughts is pointless. It's like I'm dangling over a waterfall, feeling simultaneously the cool spray, exhilarating height, stunning beauty and the very taste of death.

A simple itch speaks a simple phrase. I'm at once compelled to put my long-nailed hand to its task. As reaching around and feeling inside my shirt the path to my skin, every attempt feels good at the start– a step in the right direction! But suddenly it's quite impossible. I'm scratching an itch with a string quartet!

Because, as it happens, this is not a normal itch. It is the slight trembling from the terror of being fully alive.

I have everything I need for success. I have an enormous studio with space enough for 20 artists laboring to birth the new millennium.

So, flushed with my good fortune, all my tools laid out before me, I lift a new tool and with it apply a beautiful phrase I've been saving for years. But stop: this is a painting, where every beautiful phrase is equal in its utter uselessness. The itch is not here beneath my nails, it's on the other side of the valley, hidden in the dance between pale blue and subtle pink.

Perhaps this is the tune to which we all dance: trying to match our clumsy steps to the music that pulses within us, while desperately trying to make it look effortless and intentional. Surely I don't just dance alone...

Beauty calls me constantly. Beauty is everywhere–I can taste it on the wind in every direction. It calls my name every day, like the dinner gong. Sometimes a sweet melody, sometimes the scream erupting  the depths. Always itchy.

And yet…

Where is that clear path and where the perfect tool to finally scratch that itch to satisfaction?