““If you hear a voice within you say „you cannot paint“, then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced.”
― Vincent van Gogh
I have been long familiar with that voice. You know, the voice that says “I can’t do it”, “You’ll never make it”, “Give it up and go home”. Most days if I hear it now it is but a whisper but at times in my younger days, it was so loud it paralyzed. It kept me off the stage in university tho i had done plays in high school. It stopped me from ever doing visual art or much with my writing.
Luckily at some point I decided that if I never did any of the things that caught my mind, life would suck. I started taking chances. I collected stories of people who didn’t care what the world thought of them. People like Joshua Norton, the only Emperor the United States ever had if only in his mind (and those of the many who humoured and honoured him. (Look up his story (Somewhere a few years back on this site are a few videos I made about Emperor Norton). I think of Florence Foster Jenkins, unable to carry a tune and yet selling out Carnegie Hall with people being turned away (they might have come to laugh but they also marvelled at her spirit) . “”Some may say that I couldn’t sing, but no one can say that I didn’t sing.” she told a friend and indeed she did
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