difficult! It's difficult enough not to look like some other painter, after centuries of painted figures, but then you don't want to look like you're advertising some non-existent product or other. People wonder why artists do odd things--desperation to find a voice or style that isn't used up, usually. As you get older maybe you prefer to hide your edge, and just look banal anyway.

   and, yes, it's hard, also.

let other people be vulcans and not understand these strange human groping affections and affectations, the idea behind the hickey, for example--what IS that? I get it, most all of it, but some of it is a little tired, blatant, dull, like teddies.
   I think teddies were probably invented by censors so that you can say "sexy" on t.v. without actually being too sexy. Then people bought into it. Look! up in the sky! it's a bird, it's a plane--it's sexy! Teddies are around, to be 'sexy', but like this keyboard I'm typing on, which was designed to slow down typing so the keys won't jam, even though there aren't any keys to jam. There should be a word for such clunky, ill-intended things that persist, against better sense, to accomodate those who've already bought into it.
    In conclusion, I like legs. Once when I quit a job I told a guy there that the two things I would miss most were my friend Kim's legs. He said And? what's the other other thing? No that's it, the right one, and the left one. But I don't care much for teddies.