I am the saddest painting in the museum. I hang in a dark, quiet corner easily passed over. The paths of the hall do not encourage my discovery. Few see my walls, although I am open and accessible to all. To get here, I’ve had to live countless innumerable lives and at great personal sacrifice. I poured my guts, thoughts, passions, time, energy, devotion, love, pain into my singular work of expression. To watch the empty blank faces pass me over is really quite sad. Sometimes, someone will come along, pause to linger at me for a few seconds, before pressing on, turn and walk away. I make no impact. No one stands to gawk at me. No one debates me, or discusses me. No one validates my existence by showing any genuine response. No one is moved to tears. Oftentimes they don’t even stare, they decide immediately, instantaneously and for reasons unknown to me and maybe unknown to them, that there is nothing appealing in me or worthy of their time. I am not an important work. Better to seek out the really important works, the ones others have judged superior, to go along with the consensus view because taste can not be judged or made poor. Occasionally someone will stop for more than a few seconds. A superior artist, come to judge my fitness, to puzzle over me for awhile. But eventually they too will give up, put me away, deem the puzzle either unsolvable or all too easily solved. There is no lasting importance here. Sad art, sad wall, sad museum.