Rights.
Why don’t I have them?
As a student.
As an artist.
As a woman.
As a human.
Hey, I’m glad you stood up for yourself about the wall-painting thing. I know how it can feel to want and to need to be creative in an atmosphere that stunts it. You should be proud you’re as outgoing and involved and passionate as you are. When I was in high school, I felt so awkward with myself and so thoroughly beat down by my community, my school, and the system in general that I wouldn’t have had the nerve to go as far as you did. In fact, I spent almost all of my time alone in my room, reading and playing guitar.
I know it might seem like cold comfort now, but you’ll have a lot more personal and artistic freedom in college. And if school doesn’t suit your fancy, you will have freedom in your life no matter what you do as long as you are brave enough to ask for it (and I can see that you definitely are). The brilliant thing about high school is that the bad parts will fade into the background.
Sorry if you’re down. Cheer up. Art is wherever you make it.
By the way, when I was a college freshman, we did a wall mural. Our dorm floor was the “English cluster” as we were all English majors. We wanted our wall to somehow reflect literary theory, which is abstract to begin with so good luck creating a picture of it! Our RA found a picture in a text book that was somehow supposed to represent derridian deconstructionism… none of us knew what the hell we were drawing but we managed to recreate that thing across the wall of our dorm. Those were good times.
Cheers.
