Art in Me - Jars of Clay

Listen while reading, nothing much to watch in this video.

I AM DEAD.


I know.


And I have a strong feeling that I am not in heaven...

Nor hell.


I am walking in this vast…


Endless place.


I don’t know what to do.


I don’t know which direction to take. Everything looks the same. There is absolutely no way for me to get out of here.


The place is foggy.


And its really cold.


So bright. So empty and so green.


Why green? I’m still trying to figure that out.


I stopped walking for a while. And then I noticed this robe I’m wearing. I have never worn something like this before. And what the.. @&$*… Am I on ballet shoes? are these ballet shoes???


I don’t remember how I died. The last thing I remember was that I was drinking. And I was singing at the top of my voice with my guitar at the balcony. But I do also remember hanging my right foot at the rail of the balcony of our 11-floor apartment building. My foot was hanging there for a while. While looking at the cars passing by below me, I was puffing a cigarette at my right hand, each and every puff, I rest my hand at my right foot, which is istill hanging at the balcony-rail. But I’m pretty sure I did not jump out of the balcony. Naah, that’s not how I died. I’m sure of it.

I went on walking, till I spotted something different from afar.


13 year ago, I used to sing a song. I used to love this song even though I did not understand what it really meant. That song is playing over and over on my head right now while I draw closer to this spot. (That's the song you are hearing now, if you clicked that media on top)


13 years ago, I badly wanted to belong to a singing band. And I was really desperate. In my desperation, I kept on memorizing songs with strong will power. I thought this was how I could get into the group. Unfortunately, the band members did not notice. They might have, somehow, but I wasn’t just good enough as the singing-material for the band.


And so I started playing the guitar.


I got lazy.


I stopped.

I reached the spot. This is the only noticeable thing in this enormity. There lies, on the floor a big black book, covered with smoke.


It’s a big black book in the midst of the spotless, whiteness of the place and the undying smoke on the floor.


And I’m still despising these white robes and ballet shoes.


Could this be St. Peter’s book? I heard about this before. I think somehow I was awake when the preacher was teaching about heaven’s guidelines. And he mentioned something about a book that lists the names of people who can enter heaven. St Peter, guarding the heaven’s gates, looks at his book, checks out your name. If it’s there, you are in. Otherwise… Bye bye, down you go.


List of names, of people who have struggled enough on earth believing that if they follow heaven's guidelines, their names would be enlisted in this book... Which I think is in my arms right now.


I suddenly felt excited and started flipping my hands through the pages. There is one absolute reason why this is lying here for me to see. Yes, me... I suppose, as I am alone in here.


I’M DEAD. And I have the book of all books.


To my surprise, there was no list.


Instead, each page contains of moving pictures, a movie-like screen that shows the lives of some people I heard before. Some of them were famous. Some of them were not.

Like Picasso for instance. I did not think this is how Picasso looked like… I did not know it was him of course, but this book is sophisticated. It must have some kind of chip embedded in it, or a bluetooth device, a sensor, that reads the questions in my mind and answers each one instantly.


I saw how Leonardo Da Vinci lived his life. This man is boring. Never talked. Always writing, always thinking, always seating, always doing something. He had chair-sores. He couldn't stand, let alone walk because his balls got too heavy he could no longer carry them.


There goes my Axel Rose. He wrote his first song while trying to burn his hand with a cigarette. He was 2 and a half years old.


Some famous painters, singers, poets, dancers were in each page… Some of them I know very well, some I've never heard of in my life.


I was frantically turning at all the pages. Hoping to see my life in there. I saw Spike West in one of the pages. He blogs a lot. He writes crazy stuff. And he writes them well. He makes his readers laugh, and sometimes cry, hate, swear. He’s good at it. He makes you feel what he feels and the fact is, he is in this big-black-sophisticated-book. But the book also depicts that he is in search of something… It did not reveal it... probably because, he has not found it yet.


Hey! Wait a damn minute... I also blog, I write too. Sometimes I make poems, I compose songs once in a while. Where’s my page? Where’s my life? C’mon where is it in here? And I am getting frustrated as the pages go thinner.


I am at the last page. There’s no me. No life for me. No page for me, nothing for me.


Why? I began to ask.


But who am I asking? Who made this book?

Am I not good enough? The book is no longer answering my questions. So I figured, its not that sophisticated after all.


Why not me? My questions are getting personal.


Is there somethng in you? I began to ask myself.

Why the f*** am I crying now? Now I'm talking to myself.


Where’s your art? Question I keep on repeating.

Suddenly, in this huge place, a corner appeared. I let go of the book and crawled to that corner.


I was wailing, sobbing, weeping!

I buried my face in my knees. I can’t breathe. I was weeping like a little child who just got whipped.


Why?

ART IN ME

BY Jars of Clay

Images on the sidewalk speak of dreams decent

Washed away by storms to graves of cynical lament

Dirty canvases to call my own

Protest limericks carved by the old pay phone

In your picture book Im trying hard to see

Turning endless pages of this tragedy

Sculpting every move you compose a symphony

You plead to everyone, see the art in me

Broken stained-glass windows, the fragments ramble on

Tales of broken souls, an eternitys been won

As critics scorn the thoughts and works of mortal man

My eyes are drawn to you in awe once again

In your picture book Im trying hard to see

Turning endless pages of this tragedy

Sculpting every move you compose a symphony

You plead to everyone, see the art in me