I am currently in a state of profound cognitive dissonance regarding a professional engagement. There’s this mural, commissioned for a local house of worship, depicting— well, divine figures, really, and I find myself completely unable to access the requisite emotional or spiritual affect for its creation. It’s like, I can apply the technical skill, sure, but the underlying sentiment, that sense of reverence or awe, is just… ABSENT. I'm executing the form without the content, essentially, and it feels like a very specific type of fraud, a performance of belief I simply do not possess. It’s concerning.