Day Fifty-one: Who is the artist I'm trying to be?

It is difficult to come here and write, to speak and not know if anyone is listening. It’s hard for me to speak without knowing there is a listener. I think that is true even when I’m talking to people. If I think that the person I’m speaking to is distracted, or not focusing on what I’m saying, I step back. I choose my words differently. This makes blogging hard for me. I want to know that someone is listening, and I have no evidence that they are so I step back. I don’t know why it’s not enough for me to just say what I have to say, to just put it out into the world, but it is very hard for me. Maybe that’s why I have to do it. Maybe that’s why it’s important to find and speak in this way. To be loud into the void.

I’ve been having a really hard time lately. I feel rootless. I’ve lost some of my anchors. I’ve had some success, and success is much harder for me than failure. I have good habits that I’m having a hard time keeping.

When I started this blog, it was an awakening. It was a chance to talk about things I hadn’t really talked about. It became a way to share some things that I have a hard time talking about and being honest with myself about. Then the shit hit the fan, and I am out here, wandering around in the dusk, that is worse than the dark, because I can see just enough to know where I am, and yet I keep falling. I feel stuck even though I know exactly where I put myself. And I’ve been avoiding one important way to find what comes next, the something that will help me be happy again.  This blog. This voice out there in the middle.

And I was originally tying all of this blog to art, and how to make art. How to be an artist. Answering that question requires me to describe what an artist is. I’m unsure how any answer I come up with for that question isn’t utter bullshit. An artist can be anyone, anything. So perhaps more accurately, I’m trying to describe the artist that I want to be, an artist that I respect. So, I’ll try that now.

1.    Be a human I respect. Be aware of your actions, and how they affect the people and world around you. Be nice. Find ways to express and articulate your caring for that which is outside of you.

2.    Be smart. Read, research, be curious as hell.

3.    Educate your eyes, and create your own aesthetic. What does your ideal world look like? How do you define beauty?

4.    Be skilled. If you are going to make something, make it well. If you are going to break rules, learn them first, instead of being too lazy to try and calling it rebellion.

5.    Put the full weight of your desire behind your ability to change the world. You probably won’t. But you definitely won’t if you talk yourself out of it or if you just fuck around.

That’s pretty much it. So this blog is going to continue in a slightly different fashion, but it will be along these lines, in line with what an artist REALLY is.