I Need To Get Out Of Louisville

For the longest time I was not only content with Louisville, but I was happy. Why shouldn't I be? Yes, this isn't the biggest city in the USA, and even if it is very supportive of the arts, it is virtually impossible to work as an artist (specifically, a performing artist) within the city, but it has everything I ever wanted growing up...so how can I complain? The answer is simple: I can't. I think every single day about how different my life could have been had I grown up in a city that had magnet schools, private institutions with many opportunities for scholarship funding, and exposure, exposure, exposure. My God...

I don't have a time machine, and unfortunately for all of us, time doesn't even stop to let us think for a moment; so it's a total waste to linger on what could have been. I am just grateful to have been raised by two wonderful people who still exposed my brother and myself to as many things as they could. My parents did normal things, like encouraging us to listen to music, having us take piano lessons (6 years for myself, not sure about my brother), enrolling me in ballet, and later, jazz and tap, and of course private guitar lessons for my brother, while I opted to take private painting instruction...but these normal things meant so much more to us than most will ever realize.

For whatever reason, Eastern Kentuckians don't like art. Well, that's a roughly put statement...what I mean to say is that, they don't really care about art. Yes, you will still see plenty of folk art (quilts, woodwork, crafts, and the occasional bucolic painting: see, Russell May), and no I am not saying every Eastern Kentuckian falls into this category; but if someone were to argue with me on this, they better have an argument to back it up. I grew up around friends who, God love 'em, made fun of me for years because I was an artist. I know the majority of it was done in jest, but that doesn't make it entirely okay. It didn't help that the only decent art instructor I ever had during my entire 14-year public school education was in elementary school (a woman who I later mentored under, and realized that teaching anything outside of a collegiate setting wasn't for me). Hell, after my freshman year of high school my school decided to eliminate the art program (yes, you read correctly, the program...all because they wanted to fire the teacher), pushing me even further into the dark away from art education.

So, you see, if my parents hadn't encouraged my brother and me to take initiative outside of school for our art, then we wouldn't have become the pissy, creative little artists we are today. I am getting beside myself, though. The point of this post was about why I need to leave Louisville. In the journey that has been/currently is my life, I feel that Louisville was the perfect stop-over point for me; but I'm ready to move on. This city is comfortable...too comfortable... It feels like an artist's retirement dream (well, if you want small town America + enough of the city life, but not too much of it), but I'm not ready to retire. I'm ready to get out there and fucking work. I need to get out of this city. The world is my oyster, right?

Also, on a random site note: I heard this band called Cibo Matto on Grooveshark earlier and they are so fucking weird I can't resist them. I told Erin that if we had a band, it would be just like Cibo Matto.

Cibo Matto - Know Your Chicken by WBRNewMedia