A Brief Statement

A few days ago I ran into a local guy...a nice guy...a guy I like...who told me that he follows my posts on Facebook regularly and that he generally gets something out of what I say, but that I piss him off quite frequently.

Well...good.

I am an artist. That is what I do. I call things as I see them and I am not here on this earth to make people happy...I am here to make people think (and laugh on occasion). If you want to be happy, Oxycodone may do that for you...John Ludi will not.

As an artist I speak the unspoken and say things that make people uncomfortable...things they may be thinking in the back of their minds, but refuse to articulate as those in their circles may think poorly of them if they did so. They may be shunned or ostracized, oh my...

For myself, I find that the risk of being thought poorly of is worth my being honest and calling out the naked emperors. That is my job. That is just who I am. People have loved me AND hated me for it for all of my life. In the end, whenever it comes, I will be able to say (as a friend recently pointed out) that I was unafraid to speak my own truth and stand my ground and not bow to peer pressure just to make my life easier. I am an artist...my life was not MEANT to be easy. I have accepted the slings and arrows as part and parcel of who I am and what I do. I am a lightning rod by my very nature, and though the lightning hurts at times I deal with it and march on: I have strength and a sense of purpose and a calling that says that people like myself are here to be the vocal conscience of a world gravely out of balance...and if WE are not here to do it...if the people who dare to speak out quit, then as bad as things are now they could get all the more worse.

So I question the group-think and dominant mores when I am moved to do so...whenever they make no sense to me...and much of what we do as a species makes little sense to me...so I question often...sometimes loudly. If you are timid by nature you may not want to stand too close to me: there IS that lightning and all.

And if any of THAT makes people uncomfortable, then I am happy to have done my job.