11:44 in Paris, I’ve stopped to have a beer on the way back to my hotel. Today began with a flight to Frankfurt from Atlanta. From there I took a bus up to Retablo Cafe, which is the venue where I will be having my art show on Friday. I had about 4 hours until my train to Paris, so after scoping out the venue to lay out my plan and meet the staff, I went on a walk.
I went into a large cathedral. I love seeing the interiors, the paintings, sculptures and architecture… like it’s hard to believe that people at some point just built all that. With no internet lol… just blows my mind every time. Inside the cathedral they were playing one of my favorite songs of all time, “Claire De Lune” by French composer Claude Debussy. What’s crazy is when I left the cathedral, there was a man around the corner playing “Claire De Lune” on the violin. I just sat there for a while just being appreciative. Small graces.
My train was delayed to Paris, which caused me to miss my connecting train, which then caused me to miss my check in window to the Airbnb. Because of the delay I was hanging out on the border of Germany and France in a small town I can’t remember the name of, but they had a zoo right outside the train station. I didn’t go but instead opted to sit in a square and have some German beer and draw. After waiting I finally got onto my train to Paris and enjoyed a 3 hour sunset ride through the countryside.
The first thing I did when I got here was grab a hotel room, drop my stuff off, and got right on the metro to go see the Eiffel Tower. I saw the Eiffel Tower for the first time in 2019 and it was the first building I’ve ever actually gasped at. Just…iconic.
but as I’m sitting here, I’m just trying to take everything in. This experience, and the general desire to travel and share art around the world, has been just running in the back of my mind. With Instagram and artists or just any process in general, no one ever sees the real work we do. We don’t post the real work we do to make things happen. Showing up… creating… pushing yourself creativity… all of these happen on an internal level. The real work is never seen because you can’t even express that long of a process simply… it just takes time.
In 2021 I taped a picture of a scene in Europe on my wall in my apartment as a symbol, a target of sorts. Whenever id not feel like working, or feeling discouraged, or wondering what the point of anything was…I’d just look at that photo.
When it comes to goals, Sometimes it can feel overwhelming figuring how to get to points a to z… but the irony of it all is that everything is in the little steps, how you choose to spend your time despite what you want not being here yet. It’s more about small consistent steps everyday that eventually grow into what you’ve always imagined.
Despite what it might seem online I’ve gone through quite a few challenges over the last few years to continue as an artist - from rejections, failed attempts at ideas, burn outs, people with intentions to distract or discourage me… but in all of this I just had all of this in the back of my mind. I’ve tried my best to stay focused no matter what… to protect my dreams from this world.
and I am drinking a beer in Paris, just enjoying the moment.
Tomorrow I will begin working on my art show. My suitcase is probably 5 articles of clothing and the rest is paint, scrolls and all my mounting tools. I found a way to bring rice paper and scrolls in a trasnsportable way, so my plan is to go exploring around Paris and then at night paint and make scrolls based on what I’ve seen and experienced…
so stay tuned for the rest of the trip, thanks for reading :)