The Artist’s
I celebrate the artists, I sing with the breakers of rules,
And what I question, you shall question,
every rule that binds the living is only a shadow cast by yesterday’s dream.
Most accept the handed-down chains-
Go to school, they say, get a job, be realistic, stay in your lane-
They walk the worn grooves of the road, eyes down, shoulders bent,
Content in the given, fearful of that which must be taken.
But the artist questions all of it-
Not in madness, not in delusion,
But because he knows - every system, every empire, every trending wave,
Every company, every song, every fashion, every towering machine of culture -
Was once only a wild spark inside one solitary mind.
Reality is no fixed granite wall-
It is clay, it is river, it is wind-blown sand,
It is negotiated in the fierce handshake between soul and cosmos.
The true changers of worlds are those who refuse the limits that everyone else has nailed up as eternal facts-
They tear down the signs, they leap the fences, they laugh at the maps.
They imagine what has never been.
They speak the unspeakable.
They create before permission is born.
They stride ahead of the crowd, looking half-mad under the glare of the moon,
Only later, when the light shifts, revealed as prophets and geniuses.
In music, in business, in fashion, in verse, in code and canvas and steel-
The mightiest breakthroughs burst forth from those who will not crouch inside another’s narrow definition of the possible.
The artist does not tolerate reality as it is-
He seizes it, he wrestles it, he remakes it in his own image,
Singing new worlds into being with every stroke and breath.
My brothers, my sisters, wander with me-
What rules have you cast off?
What chains have you broken and flung into the sea?
What old command have you answered with the thunder of your own becoming?
I am the artist, you are the artist,
We are the great negotiators of tomorrow-
Come, let us question, let us imagine, let us build without waiting.
The open road is ours.
The future waits, trembling, to be redesigned.