About a year and a half ago, I came across a little Kawasaki toy keyboard in a Florida thrift store. I harvested batteries from the shelves of talking dolls and remote control cars to get the keyboard juiced up. I flicked the switch, hit the disco beat and was immediately sold. Now I have six keyboards and an organ, each with unique sounds and beats. One even has a built-in tape player so you can play along with your favorite cassettes. My prize possession is my Casio SK-1; just like the one Mar-Tie used to play. You can record sounds and play them back on the keyboard for hours of fun. But can I play the keyboards well? Well, no.

There was one point in my life when I could really play the piano. I used to play concertos in competitions and do fairly well. Then I turned twelve, turned my back on the piano, and never looked back. My mother swore that I would regret that day. Now that I look back on it, I can honestly say that I don’t.

Having been “trained” for years to be an artist, there are many times when I almost wish I never had attended a drawing class in my life. I look at children and self-taught artists (real self-taught artists who were never in a gallery until they died) and there is a joy about producing, a drive to make things, and an unselfconsciousness about the work that is really inspiring. Having attended graduate school, intellectualism now bogs me down every time I sit down to make something. There isn’t the same fun I had as a kid when I would belly up to the kitchen table with a pencil and a piece of scrap paper to draw the monster masks I saw at Taylor Made in the mall. That was fun.

I have commented to my wife (much to her anger) that I wish I was in a terrible car accident or had a lobotomy that would render me incapable of anything. I would have to learn to walk again, talk again, and draw again. But this time, I would not learn to draw at school. Then I could really enjoy art again. Drastic? Yes. Do I really want this to hapen? No. Getting potty-trained all over again would not be worth it.

What killed the fun I used to find in art? Grad school. In graduate school I was tired of talking about art that wasn’t even finished. I almost never wanted to finish a piece after discussing it mid-execution with six different teachers for an hour each. After meeting with my professors, I could see all the piece’s short comings and every way that it was an utterly failed attempt at art. The best I could do was scrap it and do something else, praying that I could do better this time.

After our first year in graduate school, my friends Laurie and Stacza decided to form the Art is Fun Club to combat the fun-crushing committees we encountered every day. The Art is Fun Club was the antithesis of committee meetings. We would get together weekly to do something fun with art. We made soap, had Bad Art Night (where we were commanded to not produce anything “good”), watched a Marx Brothers movie, and created gifts in under 15 minutes. It was very liberating to make something that wasn’t going to be judged or evaluated by our professors.

I have forgotten most everything about playing the piano. I can read music, albeit very slowly, but that’s about it. I can’t remember any of the songs I used to play, I don’t remember any real theory, and playing with both hands at the same time is out of the question. I love it! I can make up my own songs, using my own rules, and no professionals are evaluating my performance at every turn. I write stupid, simplistic songs using the most amateurish equipment. It’s like being a self-taught musician. I’m considering dropping art for 17 years so I can start to enjoy it in the future.