Put on your War Paint.
{Photo: Nick Boehm}
By Nick Boehm.
“Dance motherfucker, dance your youth into the cellular stages of public scrutiny where shaving lingers importance beyond relevance and recreation is reduced to mind-altering substances.
Bring independence but withhold creativity, you are not the type. Soak your hair and scrub your face clean. Paint your eyes, girls; boys, we wouldn’t want to succumb to a revelation of our fair beauty queens.
For the love of God, speak your mind, but only if you fit within the combination of carefully constructed, construed, and produced culture — a culture which too often mistakes laissez-faire with laziness and a nuisance from the howls of the voiceless.
Mistake me for nothing more than an ageless gentleman, with failures to shave, disagreements within the marking and making between youth and adult, and pink face paint to display my absurdities.”
~ Nicholas Trevor Boehm
And as for me?
{Photo: Nick Boehm}
Originally from a small town in Wisconsin and plagued by alcohol and cigarettes, I warped my mind with Bob Dylan and Franz Kafka only after I played All-American Boy for an unfortunate amount of time. I obsessed over High School fashion, listened to tasteless radio stations, and even attempted to play the very sports I secretly despised.
I was always looking for a way to climb the social ladder and prove my masculinity, which I found were often one and the same. I gave up my art, music, and feelings to dance my youth away and assimilate into American adulthood.
But I was desperate to share even the slightest hint of emotion. My tongue would slip at parties, inevitably leading me to be ostracized.
Face it; boys are men before they know how to be a man.
A culture that pushes masculinity loses everything special about being a youth and ultimately evolving into an adult. I was a boy trying to be a man, and now I am a man holding on to my youthfulness.
{Photo: Nick Boehm}
It’s unfortunate how American culture and media shape our lives before we even know they are shapeable.
How can America preach independence over community while simultaneously exposing introverts as problematic?
Why, when we were young, were we pushed to be creative, but as we advance into adulthood, we are expected to swap our creativity for practicality?
I find it incredibly disconcerting how young men are conditioned to bury their thoughts and emotions so deep; how we are weak if we cry when we are hurt.
{Photo: Nick Boehm}
Thankfully, I was able to regain my creativity, my expression and my independence. Now that I honor my quirks, I often wonder what my younger years could have produced.
There is more than shaving cream and face paint in these pictures.
These pictures represent the lost years. The years I should have been expressive but was too scared to be. The years you and I were forced to grow up.
*****
Nick Boehm currently resides in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains and attends Colorado State University for a graduate degree in Health Communication. He is particularly interested in using mixed media to appeal to mental health issues. This work of art describes his interests as a researcher, photographer and writer. Inspiration for this piece was found in a variety of personal yet universal struggles while making the leap into adulthood. The idea with Nick’s art is to mix truth with an almost absurd emotion to reach a new conclusion on how we view society. “I am who I am, let the rest be damned.”
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