I have said it before, but I see no separation from what is only appropriate for a stage and what is only appropriate in 'real life'. Lately, I've been asked what my hair looks like when it's not done. I cannot help but laugh. What I see as only hair, you see as, I assume, as an iconic piece of myself. This thought makes me think if many of you wonder what it is I look like when I do not 'dress up' when I am out. If you asked me that, I would say there is no difference. My look does not change whether I am going out to a fancy event or if I am simply going to Circle K. This is just who I am.
Somedays, though, I wish I was simply invisible to the world around me. I imagine what it would feel like if I could go the whole day without one person starring, one person making judgment, one day without feeling like a giant spotlight is following me around. I find it impossible though. As soon as I try to change myself to 'fit in' with the popular, my hair becomes blonder. When you try to 'fix' me, I only become more fabulous.
Maybe I am over reacting. Maybe I am.
Why do I assume everyone cares about me? Why do I think people live their lives watching my every move? What is it that makes me so damn important that people actually care? All I can say is nothing. Nothing about me is particularly special or even original. It all comes back to this statement. My one sentence philosophy on how I will my life until the day I die. I am living a giant lie in the pursuit that one day it will be a universal truth. I am celeb.
I started calling myself Andrew Fabulous only three years ago. It was kind of a mean joke I think, but I took it and ran with it. I am not Andrew Fabulous.
Andrew Fabulous has been a slow creation, a monster in most ways, but a person nonetheless. Andrew Fabulous is not be confused with a persona or a 'put-on' personality. HE is what I want to be. HE is what I strive to become. HE has every quality I want, but do not possess. HE is the lie that I kill for. Andrew Fabulous is a hero, an artist, a true star...a divine being.
I get quite scared when people call me Andrew Fabulous. I react as if I almost do not believe them... only because I do not. I remember the first time a teacher had called me Andrew Fabulous. I had wrote about him in my senior synthesis paper. This was not the first time I had wrote about the infamous being, but I suppose no one else had believed in him either.
I had walked into class as usual and sat down. I never talked to anyone, even after four years, and everything seemed quite normal. I do not remember what he had exactly said to me, but my teacher had my classes full attention and, out of nowhere, he called me by the name I only wished people would call me. I was embarrassed.
I was not ashamed like when a teacher calls you out for sleeping in class. I was humiliated because I did not believe in myself. I had not honored that work that I had put into being this person. I did not trust myself.
I am still trying to find what it means to believe in oneself. It is not something easily accomplished. Especially when you look back upon your life and see how many people did not believe in you. Despite the past, I found hope in the letters to a young poet from Rainer Maria Rilke, Rilke tells the young poet to not look towards outside sources for validation of his works for if what he creates.
"A work of art is good if it has arisen from necessity. Its origin determines how it is judged. There is no other form of judgement."
So I have put it upon myself to carry this burden of being an artist... of having a giant spotlight on me everywhere I go. I must ask myself many times throughout my days, "Must I be an artist?" I must take the risk of being ridiculed in order to stay true to myself and my art. I must make choices that will not always make me happy, but that will make me a better artist. In pursuit to becoming Andrew Fabulous.
I choose to live in this closet filled with my monster personal and inspiring objects. I have surrounded myself with culture. I sleep every night with my fashion magazines, my creepers, my newspaper clippings, my books, my colognes, my candles, my dead flowers, my music, my paintings, my clothes, my bible, my pills. I breathe it and make it a part of me. It sometimes makes me very happy and other times, it drives me to the point of insanity and suicide. + yet, I would not want to live any other way. This is my virtue.
"I must be free. I must be me. In no promise of fame or parties. In no certainty of an effigy. I will die like I lived in the glare of publicity." - Andrew Fabulous 10/18/2011
LOVE + ART
Andrew Fabulous
THE ANTI-DIAMOND
Andrew Fabulous
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