This time last week I was driving home from an airport run. Playing Janelle Monae 's Sincerely Jane over and over again --- just because its so cool. I know that is very high school but who doesn't do that ?
Last Sunday is miles and I mean-- miles--- away. So here is this Sunday that marks the ending of the work that I have been immersed in and the continuing of following this path , this pattern of what does it mean to lead ---really lead an artistic creative life. Art making never really stops. We never really stop because one thing leads into the next and into the next --- and then there you are making something --- all alone, but surrounded. Surrounded by tradition, by meaning, by context, by media, surround also by love .
What we do is not a mark of ourselves in the world so much as it is a way to allow others to understand themselves through our experience. We as artists open ourselves not for the accolade of opening but hopefully through the generosity of spirit we open, we become a conduit to something else. This kind of opening is done with faith, with trust in oneself ... and at times with a tremendous amount of insecurity, with tentativeness that comes with not knowing. However once we are comfortable with the unknown there is an explorer that takes over and bushwhacks and leads. This discovery is not just for the self. In fact left only for the self it is incomplete. Thomas Merton speaks about the boomerang of knowledge of the artist to the viewer and then back and then again to the viewer --- this cycles does not stop and is the completion; the continuation of the creative process. So here we are a week later different, and the same . Secure now in the insecurity and the discovery and the exploration in a new and then old way.
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