[angelgonzales]

About a decade ago some guy thought I was taking a picture of him and his girlfriend, they were very uninteresting subjects and I didn’t take any pictures of them but he followed me and sucker punched me. He was caught quickly and I pressed charges and since he had priors he didn’t make bail and was sentenced to 2 years in prison which I don’t think was enough because even a soft punch could kill someone. After that I began carrying non-lethal and lethal tools for self defense and stopped worrying about hurting people’s feelings when I take pictures. If people tell me off I tell them off because ultimately our conflict is based off of differing arbitrary opinions. I concluded that art is a human right and I should never feel guilty or bad about making it. Art is noble and it’s a high pleasure and part of being human. I have a short time in this life to create art so I should just do what I feel is pure and what I want. I’ve also concluded that if I did what everyone told me to do (or what they told me not to do) I’d be eating ten pounds of spinach a day, waking up a 5 AM, drinking a gallon of milk a day, buying timeshares and joining the Marines! Obviously I wouldn’t be doing what I want, my point is that artists need to listen to their inner voice and follow wherever that takes them.