The Blue Duck

There is a blue duck.

I cannot tell you where it came from.

Perhaps you already have one.

Most people do.

It may not look like a duck.

It may be a song you cannot explain.

A drawing you made without knowing why.

A story that somehow says more than anything you could say plainly.

A particular way of moving through the world.

Something you built.

Something you wear.

Something you keep.

Something you made once and never quite understood.

It is the thing that speaks when you cannot.

“It’s our way of telling each other things we feel but are unable to put into words. It is ultimately the only real way of sharing who we really are with the rest of the world.”

Perhaps that is what art is.

Not decoration.

Not performance.

Not even communication in the ordinary sense.

A little piece of the inside,

given a shape that can survive outside.

You cannot hand someone your experience.

You cannot open your skull and say,

Here. Look at this.

So you make a blue duck.

And somehow,

they can see it.

They may not know what it means.

They may give it a different meaning entirely.

That is alright.

The blue duck does not need to explain itself.

It only needs to arrive.

There is something almost sacred about this.

To make something that did not exist before,

and leave it where another consciousness can encounter it.

A little signal sent across the dark.

A flare.

A footprint.

A spell.

Perhaps the strangest things we make are the most honest.

Because the part of you that made them may have known something your vocabulary didn’t.

So don’t worry too much about explaining your blue duck.

You may ruin the experiment.

Make it.

Leave it somewhere.

Let it be strange.

Let it be misunderstood.

Let someone else discover it and wonder why it feels familiar.

You don’t have to tell them.

In fact,

you probably couldn’t.

That’s why you made the duck.

And somewhere, eventually,

someone will find it.

They may stop.

They may smile.

They may feel something they cannot name.

And for one brief moment,

something that lived only inside you

will be alive inside someone else.

That is a blue duck.

Everyone has one.

Some of us are still making ours.