Having an artist’s soul means seeing things and connecting them, questioning them, using them, shelving them, sorting them, cradling them, forcing them, and laying them in flames to be recreate. To destroy and rebuild.  To create and modify. To wonder about every little thing your eyes take in and question it. To see something set in stone and to smash it with a sledgehammer, gluing all the pieces back together how you want them to be.

To have an artist’s soul is to find things and collect them.  In fact, an artist can end up having an entire collection without even realizing they started it. Take, for example, my own personal collections such as; the Dried Flowers Collection, the Bottle Caps From Different Kinds of Sodas Bought at The Shepherdstown Bakery Collection, the Aesthetic Rocks I Found at Ocean City Collection, and the infamous Fascinating Necklaces Collection. However, in order to create a successful and unique collection, one must have an eye for the miniscule wonders. An artist never lets a detail be missed. An artist can record their data in many ways ranging from a hands-on notebook to a mental catalogue. On many an occasion, I will walk past something in the store and be a full three to four aisles away from it before I have to turn back and see what it was. I can’t bear the thought of never knowing. I crave the desire to seek out every detail of life and paste it onto a canvas in my brain labeled, “Books” or “Shades of Lipstick”. I’ve been told I take an absolutely absurd amount of time in stores.

To have an artist’s soul means to be a bit of a disaster at all times. You see, an artist wants their room to look as aesthetically pleasing as physically possible, but this becomes a slight issue when one attempts to factor in the artist’s acute eye for detail. An artist keeps everything and needs to find the perfect place for everything. For example, when I obtain new clothes, the de-tagging of each article is a process in itself. I must sit down with each garment, examine it closely, and make a mental log of what I can pair with it and for what occasions each selection will fit. Then I look at the tag and decide if it would make a nice addition to my collection of Things On My Wall, or perhaps Things On My Corkboard. If so, it is added to a pile of tags that will be one say sorted and given a proper home (I promise, Mom). But those piles aren’t just of tags. An artist has piles and piles of papers, keychains, cards, beads, pins, markers, wire, pendants, flowers, eraser, and books, both full and blank. Piles and Things and Items and More. An artist’s living space if full of things that make no sense whatsoever, but are completely necessary to own. I myself own two Beatles records. One is warped entirely and will never be able to play. That aside, I don’t even own a record player. But having those great pieces of art as a constant presence in my room gives me a strange sense of satisfaction that I can’t quite describe.

To have an artist’s soul means to examine. To view every solitary, miniscule mark first, saving the big picture for last. It means to take one things and create a fifteen-hour and six-minute documentary of it in your head. To take into account specks, dots, and dribbles. To look at objects as if your eyes are a microscope and you are adjusting the zoom. First, look at the sample in 50x, then 2x, then 101x, then 528764231x, then 0.000000007x. To see a world in every individual molecule your eyes land on.

To have an artist’s soul means to be an adventurer. To find a story in every moment, every person, every breath of life, and still chill of space. To write your autobiography down inside your big, beautiful brain cells. It means to have three separate playlists for getting the mail on a Tuesday because you never know what kind of adventure will unfold. Maybe there will be bills. Maybe there will be a really cool flower growing by the box. Maybe it will start to rain! Now that would be an adventure! An artist lets every second sweep them off their feet and every minute transcend them. To take a trip to Target and turn it into the Action-Adventure Comedy of the Century.

To have an artist’s soul is to perceive things differently. To view things from a very different perspective altogether. To feel the connect and disconnect from you and the rest of Human Nature. To explain your reasoning and receive funny looks. To create palaces, libraries, and filing cabinets inside your mind that you can both navigate with a compass and get lost in completely. I often wonder how to explain the own personal behaviors of my brain and over the years I’ve come around to developing a reasonably simple analogy. My head is a computer. It has folders with subfolders, desktop shortcuts, and all the things that a typical computer would. But imagine this: In the Photos folder, there are poems, quotes from Alice in Wonderland, a link to Teavana’s website, tips on how to slice a pineapple, and an ABBA album that I swear I didn’t purchase. There are photos of my late Aunt Fern from two Easter’s ago in the Music folder. There are seventeen different versions of “I’ll Be Home For Christmas” in the Documents folder. Who even knows where The Sims 3 shortcut is? I just pop in the disc and hope for the best. But I digress, even with my seemingly nonsensical thinking process, I can still name off the exact font printed on a poster or tell you what record label My Chemical Romance released each of their albums on.

To have an artist’s soul is to love vastly. To love each blade of grass, each line on a sheet of notebook paper, and every tea leaf at the bottom of the mug. To love everyone you meet, even if you hate them to pieces. To love everyone you don’t meet, won’t meet, and can’t meet. To love everything with all of your senses and all of your being and recognize every person as a selection of artwork still being finished. To leave a mark on everything that is touched. To embed pieces of yourself into people, locations, things, and otherwise. Even now as I write this essay, I slot specific bits of me and the things that shape me into paragraphs, phrases, and ideas. To find things that you love and take them and plant them in places most unexpected.

To live with an artist’s soul is to inhale air and to exhale life itself.