2.6: Wherein I insult you.
It's very common for artists to have a fear of success or failure. It keeps them from accomplishing their goals. You know the fear, it's attached to your self esteem, your ego. It's the thing in your head that whispers you'll never be good enough to make a living, to be famous, to be thought of as great, to be remembered. So why try?
I have to say that, after careful consideration, I don't care about your opinion of my work much at all (no offense, of course.) I know that my struggle isn't with whether you like me or not. I'm no longer concerned with making a living on art, and there are no gatekeepers that I need to impress. I've never found myself overly hurt if someone didn't get my stuff.
The struggle I think I have is internal, and I'd describe it this way:
It is disappointment and frustration caused by an expectation of the potential of an idea congealing into the reality of it's expression.
Like a tumultuous heavenly explosion of matter and gasses cooling; slowing and collecting into the dull reflective wafer we call the moon. No longer generating it's own heat and light, just being there to reflect it. It is the dissonance created by definition.
If there is indeed a fear that keeps me from completing things, it's not whether or not the world will think it's good. It is that I won't be able to properly honor the relationship I have with a universe that gives me inspiration. I judge my success or failure by whether I can live up to the potential I saw when it was alive and fresh and it's wings were still wet.
2.7: The only conclusion this comes to.
So the easy fix here is to just enjoy the ideas.
But how do I live with myself by taking these things and preserving them on a shelf in a basement that only I have a key for?
Or how do I pick up that tin-can telephone that connects me to a world of expression, and then pinch the string to staunch the flow, like a kinked garden hose?
It's foolish, I don't think I can.
I have to make these imperfect golems. And I have to do so with the knowledge that I am currently a fumbling and poor midwife. I must acknowledge that the gulf between intent and my hand is worlds-wide and crumbling all the time, and each move I try to make towards a goal is in reality an opportunity for me to excel at fucking it all up. And I will.
We will never properly express the divine. We can't see well enough. Our fingers are too big and we can't make brushes small enough to paint it's details. We don't hear enough frequencies, we are limited by gravity and our muscles are weak. Our hearts can't beat fast enough. We are powerless to do justice to the inspirations that we are handed.
I bubble over like shaken champagne sometimes, at the enormity of the things that I see. I race through traffic at rush-hour and rubberneck at the way the afternoon light glints off the edges of people's joy and I giggle like a madman at how each of us fails so expertly at expressing our connections to the universe. I've been given an outlet: a way of seeing things and the foolhardy notion that I might be capable of representing this somehow. I've spent years learning about the tools of that representation and how to use them. And yet, I'm still so goddamned bad at it. And I can't stop.
Maybe that's what makes an artist. Not a god-given talent, or even years of practice. Maybe it's an attitude or a desperation, to continue to fumble around and describe the elephant of internal world, knowing how blindfolded we are. To see in your mind's eye the enormity of it all and still have the temerity to get one small chip of that diamond down on paper, knowing it wont live up to the real beauty.
And maybe you can go about that process in one of two ways: You're either Leda or the Swan.
In fact, this myth can also be about two different ways to overcome the anxiety of creation. You can use your pride as fuel and push yourself onto the world. Cut through the middle of it, knocking over glasses and tipping chairs, frenetic with the living matter and gasses of a uncooled world, and just as caring.
Or you can be humble about being a conduit. Empty and clean, prepared by the bank of a river and ready to reflect the glory that will come to you.
And maybe it's about being both, knowing when to switch roles. Jump tracks when you are mastered by the brute blood of the air.
I'll have to finish this painting now, I can't walk away from it after I've taken all this time, written over 5000 words about the process and the revelations it's given me. I'll attempt to quiet the buzzing and bring it all to some satisfactory conclusion, hoping for it to show some of the potential I think is in there, before its indifferent beak will let me drop.