By Lineo Segoete

I have NEVER gotten people, sure with time I have developed some kind of mechanism to deal but I still do not understand them. When I was younger, I always found myself involved in some kind of conflict, either I hurt someone (i.e. beat them), said something inappropriate or ignored them altogether. Understand, these always resulted from a contradictory action which led to my (over) reaction.

For the most part, my heart is always in the right place. My intention is always to spread happiness, meaning I am prone to want to impress others. I take it personally when I am taken out of context, especially when I am given no premises to defend myself. Yes I am defensive, sue me.

After constantly being taken advantage of and blamed when things go wrong one does tend to build up walls. One falls prey to self-defeat, insecurity, doubt and blindness if one is consistently torn down or hardly encouraged. One tends to neglect one’s own beauty when one is never accepted for who one is especially in the social context.

Art has always served as the tool to make sense of this strange world; it is the one thing I have never been self-conscious with or about. This may seem conflicting considering that it is imperative for my written work to be eloquent enough not to be misconstrued. Nevertheless, with art life is fair, honest, loyal, whole, a wonderful tragedy and forever.

I’ve just concluded that I am a social misfit and it’s ok if my universe revolves around me, this is the nature of man. In my universe, I stare at the stars and dream up poetry, I look at colours and see God’s face; mountains, rivers, flowers, children, death, pain and struggle make more sense to me than people ever will.

People are a paradox and I’m socially awkward, what a dilemma. I love art and people love ‘love’, perhaps that is our common ground. We are all different things to different people, some of which are unpleasant, so what. You can’t please everybody, but art will always liberate you.