FEAR.
Who said that?
Me!
Who are you?
The voices inside your head.
Can't worry about them, I have to write this article for all my adoring fans.
What adoring fans?
I must have some readership, even if it is friends, family, my immediate community.
So what? Who are they? Do they really matter?
...........
Aaaaaaand Scene.
This was a dramatic reading from inside my head, but it illustrates the point very quickly.
We are our own worst enemy.
I know what you are saying, because I say it: What good is this to me? Everybody says that!
Hold onto your seats folks....you ready? I don't think you are......
Everybody feels afraid.
No really, look around your home, or Starbucks, or dorm, wherever you are reading right now.
Everybody worries their art isn't enough.
That they are not enough.
It is why we lash out, why there is so much pain and frustration in artistic circles and domestic circles.
We are all just screaming for attention and most importantly: love.
"What a radical notion!" he said to the emptiness of interweb space.
But it is true.
We are creative beings.
We are storytellers by nature.
So what stops us from telling stories?
What makes us think our artistic endeavors are not enough?
I have been dwelling on this for weeks.
It is one of the big reasons why I haven't published a damn thing.
And it all comes back to fear.
So I decided to do something about it.
I decided to do my own art.
And that is when I became a practicing artist.
Oh you, me, the bloke on the street corner: all artists.
I believe that in my bones and no one can take that away from me.
But practicing your art, whatever it may be is the most important thing.
So I grabbed this book: The Artist's Way
Now, let me be clear...I hate this book.
I despise it.
And the authoress.
You and your dumb face.
It is, to put it bluntly, (and I apologize for my English) not my cup of tea.
There! I said it!
People often make art into a spiritual experience with colors and energy and...I don't know what the hell they are talking about.
Give me concrete examples that I can process phenomenologically and I am your boy!
No one makes it more "spiritual", and when I say "spiritual" I mean that guy that asks, "Are you a 'spiritual' person", than this lady!
God, which she refers to throughout, is the ultimate creative force in the universe and if we open ourselves up to it, we can become conduits for the divine creative energy.
There. I did it. I gagged. But I did it.
So why am I plugging it?
I am not.
But I will say the lady understands artist block.
I have not written a single thing for my own benefit in over ten years.
TEN. YEARS.
Practicing daily, I started writing again, I am sketching, singing, looking into acro-swordplay-archery-lessons for the first time in a decade!
Now, I do not know how copywright [sic] works so I will give you the toned down version:
Write every day.
Fill your artistic vessel every day and produce something artistic every day.
That is the book in a nutshell.
Plus a whole lot of deity talk.
Every day we face the naysayers and the critics.
And we are worse than all of them because we have been taught to be.
My father taught me that rough drafts are the most important thing in the world.
Which made me terrified of rough drafts.
I graduated with a master's degree in fine arts and I have not written a rough draft since elementary school. Where they were REQUIRED!
Why did I do that?
My dad demanded that I give him a rough draft before I even started working on a project.
Why did he do that?
Because he is an engineer. And a damned good one.
In his craft, he requires blue prints because they are less expensive than models.
I am an artist, I require mess and chaos, my dad requires order and cohesion.
So for years I have been an artist too afraid to write a rough draft.
Still am.
But I write them anyway.
Why do I do that?
Because it feels good today.
Life is full of suffering, most of it our own making.
Trust that we all have problems, fears, but know that it is tempered by love.
Leap. Trust that your work is good enough and it will be.
Practice every day.
Who knows?
You might become an artist yet.
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