It only hurts when I laugh.

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I remember every act of cruelty towards animals as a child and still suffer for it as an adult. As I peruse my high school graduating class's website I note with grim satisfaction the passing of certain individuals with whom I failed to come to an understanding. All's forgiven now. Then I see (also deceased) schoolmates who were victims of general teasing, and whose side I failed to take then—as I would have done as an adult. One more life's opportunity missed...

It is a painful fact of life that without misdeeds there would be no regrets, no conscience—no adults. This is outrage about acts of cruelty as an adult, not crime, but private acts of cruelty that can't be so easily dismissed as the misdeeds of childhood and adolescence. Pride tells me I didn't do that, no one knows, and yet, somehow, I'm unwilling to deny it for what looks like a dubious trade. My soul for a badge of honor? No deal.

Is it cruelty to make homelessness the subject of art? Everyone, both cast and audience, laughs at the victim, everyone, that is, except the victim. In a tragedy everybody weeps. Oedipus cried his eyes out. Comedy, by contrast, is return to childhood. The reverse criticism can be leveled at tragedy—that it is sentimental. Not every melodrama is tragic, while comedy is unsentimental to a fault. 

Comedy is cruel, not literally cruel, as can be said of libelous slander. Satire can be cruel—when it goes too far. The Divine Comedy lampooned contemporary personages, and yet, Dante wasn't burned at the stake. Dying for art is not proof of passion. It looks more like a crisis of faith—in art.

There is a mean between extremes at which the satirist aims. My artworks on the subject of homeless people gets a Parental Guidance rating from the censors. Don't hold me responsible for misleading immature viewers. Between adolescence and adulthood I was fortunate to attend a school of higher education in which the difference between reality and representation was taught. You had to "get it" to graduate.

The difference between fact and fiction is not trivial. An idiot might mistake the action on stage for the real thing and express outrage. Intelligent individuals can make the inverse mistake, that of mistaking reality for a play—with regrettable consequences. The subject of my art is real, possibly tragic, while comical in effect. I risk becoming a comical figure myself for making it my subject.

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