PetaGaye Edwards

https://www.newgrounds.com/art/view/adventvoice/petagaye-edwards called me today after receiving her gifts.

I am thankful they made it in time for her birthday. She called to tell me how grateful she was to receive the cards, to tell me how nice it was to be able to see herself from my eyes.

I told her of the challenge to capture her beauty just right, that I would try again at a later date. She told me she understood, “Many have attempted to draw my face in the past and have failed is far worse attempts.” Telling me I should not waste my time with that and focus on my writing. “You should certainly aim to sell your own publications, you have such a way with words.”

I rather wish I could remember what it was I said to her to make her blush so. I remember pieces of it. The question is, would anyone pay for words that make them feel as beautiful, kind and endearing as they are? As she is?

There was a time in my life when I did not need the validation of others for most of anything. Of course, for me when I was young I was deemed self-efficient by those older and my peers. Many were willing to pay for my services and art.

To me validation, true validation, equated into the form of some cash and gave birth to the idea that anything was better than nothing. This independence on the accreditation from my esteem public was during a time when people felt comfortable spending $10-$20.00 on a publication. Now your lucky to find anything worth reading on the shelves in your local market and a lot of that is not due to the myth of internet market bubbles, rising and bursting. The success of online blogs or the individuals lack desire to read anything unless some form of sensuality is pronounced.

 I believe it has a lot to do with some mystic organization that has been teaching the general public, censorship is good and there are certain publications and works of art and social groups that should not be funded for some obscure reason.

 I was reading, “DieKittyDie,” Heaven and Hell #3: which is a comic that was published by Chapter House: Astroid Comics, written by Fernando Ruiz and Dan Parent.

This particular issue was going over the ‘70’s and everyone’s need, who was Christian, to send their daughters to convents because they dipped acid or smoked a cigarette. That was the idea (blame Christians for moral policing while everyone else gets away with policing our thoughts.) It sold like hot cakes and helped to further the push of anything with a moral or plot out of the public square. If you get people thinking about right and wrong, even from a humanitarian point of view you were stepping on toes of investors that sold stories based on superficial teenage baggage, not art.

 In “DieKittyDie,” she was asked to allow an evil publisher to die, his name is Skip Stone, in the story he is owner of KittyComix, who like many that lacked creativity would steal from others and threaten to sue them when they asked for their cut on the proceeds. That problem was not exclusive to the 70’s and occurs a lot, now-a-days.

I am always weary of thieves and try to be up front with people about my desires. I was asked recently, “What do you want of your art, what do you want it to do for you, what goals have you trekked out for your work?”

This of course coming from someone that believes my talents to be as irrelevant as Latin or the aspirations of a concert pianist. I wanted to tell her, my admirer, or at least the admirer of my talent.

“ I don’t want my work to do any more that it is already doing. I want those that view it to be able to map out my heart, to see line upon line- here a little- there a little- that as the lines connect, identification is developed, recognized and valued beyond Aadhaar or what the tech giants have placed value on the “reconciliation,” of our beautiful faces.