Are You Sure You’re Doing The Wrong Thing?

 
Life should not be comfortable; it isn’t to a person’s advantage to have it so.  Nor should art.  Never have the masterpieces of life or art been pleasant or easy.  They are always rugged peaks to be ascended by the few. ~Nikos Kazantzakis

About 30,000 years ago, the earliest examples of the cave art of our ancestors began to appear. And from that moment in history, we sought to express strong feelings through imagery. This proved a great intellectual breakthrough for our species. And I’m sure those first artists were lauded and offered the best food the tribe had to offer. This breakthrough was of paramount importance to everyone.

In effect, man could ‘freeze’ part of his environment long enough for his powerful intelligence to think about it, to manipulate it, to understand it fully. ~ Readers Digest, The First Two Million Years.

This led to teaching aids, toys and tools. Therefore, art has played a quintessential part of our evolution. A friend raised a great topic the other day on Facebook. She asked a question which set me to thinking for days afterwards.

I love Facebook. There, I said it! Sometimes, the discussions that start there are the best conversations I have in a day. They’re wonderfully honest.

            Back to the great question posed. My friend has been going through some of the more stressful events of life in recent times. Then a colleague went away, and sorely missing her, my friend was left questioning her course in life. An artist and writer, she posted this status update:

I’m not even sure why being able to draw has a purpose these days...it doesn’t seem to have any artistic or financial merit. I always thought it was a divine gift. What should I do with it? Please discuss

I thought, wow, that’s such a thought-provoking topic. People chimed in with ringing thoughts like, It is a really simple and cathartic way to channel your juju and to process whatever it is inside you which needs to be processed.

Another commenter shared this quote: "Art is not about making a living it is about making a life." The wise words of Paulus Berensohn

 

 

Fired up, I commented, “My oil paintings will outlive me. I kind of like that. However, leaving legacies aside, a world without art and artists of all kinds I would not want to live in. Our purpose may not be expressed in the same clearly linear format of hours done/recompense given/living earned sort of thing as other people get to do. The arts are about much much more than that. They're about spiritual, emotional, mental, physical expression and transmutation and magical processes. The arts provide the rest of mankind with those most important of elusive experiences: hope, and inspiration, and aspiration and joy.”

They're about the alchemy of being reminded to look up and remember the bigger picture.

 

Where would any of us be without it? I’m quite sure that art led to the development of the written word. We don’t just want the arts, we depend on them. As the world becomes more burdened and soulless around us, we need our artists and creatives more than ever. So, if you were chosen, and have that destiny, bless you, and keep going. You're 'remembering the universe' for everyone. Don’t ever give up!

 

My pal, the writer PJ Reece and I were having an email back-and-forth once on the topic of being transported by our work (as lowly writers). In signing off, he said, “Ah!  The eastern sky is lightening.  I gotta go.  An hour from now my best interests will be hijacked by appearances and the everyday mind, and I will be buried under gravel, again.”

            And that’s it. Life railroads over us with demands and needs. We're earthed by the fact the bills have to be paid, the toilet scrubbed, the son’s nose wiped. This week, I go to see my dentist, my car needs a panel beater, and take middle child to have the gunk sucked out of his ears. If I couldn’t read, or see a movie, or look at a painting; if I didn’t have my ‘art’, my books to write, I would not survive. For me, as a creative person, these channels of expression form my outlet and wonderfully, they have the potential to uplift others as well one day. That’s sublime. Transformative.

 

“Where There Is No Vision, the People Perish” The phrase comes from the Bible’s book of Proverbs, and it expresses an important truth: Humans, in order to live effectively and happily, need a goal—a vision—to pursue. ~ Paul Rosenberg

 

Yet these days, the artist, the writer, the singer, is no longer at the top of the food chain. The ‘artist’s way’ as Julia Cameron coined it, is not for the faint-hearted. No. You must have courage in your heart and steel in your spine. You must 'have your stirrups on', as my sister would say. The arts are not generally regarded as a high status profession. Admiration is saved for the famous. No one, not your family, not even your spouse will respect your choice to go the artist’s way unless you’re making money. For writers, there are a small tier of authors on the top shelf, the bestsellers, who make a good living out of writing fiction. The rest of us  will only ever do our writing alongside our ‘real job’. It’s unappreciated, underpaid, and I have to say, a fairly thankless path.

 

 

 

As PJ Reece said, I guess all outsiders are symbols of failure in the eyes of the mainstream. It reminds me of Leonard Cohen’s long-ago mentor who, concerned for Leonard’s onward path, asked him:

“Are you sure you’re doing the wrong thing?”

 

 

I know I am. I’m happily following my muse, thirty five years later, I’m still writing for children - despite everything - still doing the wrong thing. And it continues to light up my life. How about you? Mojo intact? Are you doing the wong thing? I love to hear from you...

 

See ya’ in the funny papers!

Yvette K. Carol

http://www.yvettecarol.com