I’M an artist, and I’ve been dying a slow and heartbreaking death from the moment I was born.
It only became apparent to me the older I got, but I managed to get a better understanding of this when I was today years old. And I won’t lie to you, I feel so darn lucky to still be alive right now, although I’m barely holding on because by design, and by statistic, I should have withered and died a quiet, lonely and sad death by now.
It’s funny how things unfold.
Artistry has long been perceived as this ‘thing’ one does as an addition to something more solemn and concrete. One cannot be just an artist. One cannot have that be their thing without either people batting their eyelids or having everything and every detail of you be firmly but blatantly scrutinized, built and based on stereotypical and prejudiced views, beliefs and conceptions of “your kind”. OR being bombarded ashore with a plethora of questions that neither seem nor sound anything but sincere.
The experience often resembles being picked apart simply for the satisfaction of the interrogator’s curiosity. It’s kind of similar to how one can relentlessly pick at a shell to see if there really is a turtle underneath, decorated with a certain kind of desperate angst and eagerness to not have been misled their entire lives by a spineless myth. The most daring of their kind will even go to the extremist extents of nagging at your turtleneck just to see if you really have a neck under there as if probing and poking at your shell wasn’t invasive and meddlesome enough. It’s actions like these that really let it drive home and seep in rather intricately that you can’t just be an artist. “What else do you do?”
I imagine it’s the same as having a salad for dinner. How loud our bloody melanin screams,
“Where’s the rest of the meal?! Oh, you dieting or something? Is that what it is? Because that makes more sense”. Gander at how similar this sounds to, “So, are you really set on this art thing, or it’s just a phase as you try and figure out what you actually really want to do the rest of your life? Because I can understand that, that makes more sense….and cents (LOL??)”.
To be, to exist and live as an artist is no easy feat. Apart from everyone else’s perception of you being naïve with your head in the clouds; despite how liberating it is to create, it is also extremely bonding and frustrating, largely owing to the fact that with the ability to create normally also comes a weird sense of responsibility, and an overwhelming sense of self that’s almost impossible to escape as it binds to the hypersensitivity of our emotions and feelings. It’s kind of what skin is to the bone. That’s why artists tend to be protective of their work because our creations and our art is a major extension of self, hence any form of criticism, opinion, encouragement, support and/or the lack thereof is incredibly impactful on self and our entire conceptions of ourselves.
From the outside looking in, this may seem and sound absurd, how someone may greatly be bothered when their work and art is misunderstood, undervalued and unappreciated. This is ironic because that same spectator understands the same logic through a different lens. Almost everyone likes to understand God’s wrath in the mistreatment of his creations and is always ever so zealous as a recipient of God’s love and grace by virtue of having been created and brought into existence by him.
Albeit, that same someone finds it so strange and unfathomable when an artist catches wrath over unjust opinions regarding your creations. Perhaps a point to understand is that just as The Creator architectured and moulded the human race from nothing but clay, with so much love that he’s keen to forgive and forget (a feat we all know is not A-B-C easy) all sorts of misdemeanours (for the lack of better word) regardless of the gravity, from lies to thievery, all the way to murder, artists also do the same.
It really is the same sentiment with artists. We create from nothing but mind, body and soul. We bring into existence what did not exist before, whether that’s in song, in sound, in visual, or just matter. We breathe life into the world by creating and making it a little bit easier for it to go around and for humanity to understand it better.
The artist dies because life is not easy. Opportunities play catch, appreciation rare as diamonds, and it’s just difficult to accomplish all with a rod that won’t fish further.
What an artist possesses is a gift; a gift to create and bring the nonexistent into existence. The power that lies within this gift is rather quite profound because it makes you a great contributor to the world and humanity as every time you create and put something into the world, you add something new to an already existent world, a new brush stroke to a status quo painting. And not only that but you also alter the course of life for whoever who runs into this new thing that you’ve added to the world. A handful of people could feel the impact, it might be a couple of thousands, or it might be millions of people despite the scale, you are contributing, and that’s more than one can say for others.
Now, this part is when the hurt sets in. No good deed goes unpunished. For the good you bring into the world, some may be appreciated, but best believe you will be punished for it. I don’t know how it works. It’s just the mechanics. They kill you. They kill your spirit, and your inner child continues to suffer. Depending on strength, it may be loud enough for you to hear, but sometimes we don’t hear, or we do and choose to ignore it.
Perhaps as artists, this is one of the painful truths we have to live with because it’s only a handful that actually sees their potential through to reach and amass a sizeable big-ass forkful spoon of chocolate cake. Others get crumbs so they have an idea of the palate, but the rest is nowhere between the two nor in between.
These are the many losses and deaths of artists we don’t get to see. But sure, let them eat cake.
The stigma that comes with artistry, whether good or bad, stems from its oxymoronic nature. Art has a lingering, bittersweet taste because of how it exposes a society to itself. It’s a truth serum no one wants a part of lest it bursts the bubble they have encapsulated themselves in. It brings things to the light, to centre stage, casts a beam into the heart of darkness and says “see?”. And this is hardly ever met with enthusiastic responses or reactions because when one does not want to see something or come to terms with it, they get mad and angry at the one who shows them and forces them to see in good old if you don’t like the message, kill the messenger fashion.
To quote Julia Cameron,
“art opens the closets, airs out the cellars and attics. It brings healing. But before a wound can heal it must be seen, and this act of exposing the wound to air and light, the artist’s act, is often reacted to with shaming”.
And that is how some of us die. We die by shaming.
As well as the obvious causes of artist death and death from shame, we also die from ignorance and a profound and troubling lack of knowledge. We want results and we want them now, chucking all knowledge and sense out the window. Art and wine are not the same but similar, similar in the sense that maturity is the vehicle that gives them both importance and relevance engraving it in the sands of time. This is why going after and chasing instant gratification is a dangerous cheap thrill as it takes away so much from the art and the artist themselves because it ceases to be purposeful and becomes more about the response and reaction of the crowd wringing out the essence, purpose and heart of it all in a fugacious heartbeat. And that is how some of us die, by forgetting the reason we got into this, to begin with.
We die because we’re oblivious to how this urge to create is actually a gift from the ultimate Creator himself, we’re ignorant to how this is a spiritual transaction and collaboration with the universe, only to beat ourselves up when it doesn’t work out because we tried to speed up chemical reactions we simply do not control. It’s kind of like attempting to rush photosynthesis.
“Looking at God’s creation, it is pretty clear that the creator itself did not know when to stop. There is not one pink flower or even fifty pink flowers, but hundreds. Snowflakes, of course, are the ultimate exercise in sheer creative glee. No two are alike. This creator looks suspiciously like someone who might just send us support for our creative ventures.”
Artists also die by suicide, as an act of heroism oneself because after a while of struggle and watering what now appears to be a dead plant, one gets to a point where they lose all sense to understand what the point of giving to an unappreciative audience is. Usually, at this point, there are two options, either to self-destruct or just kill yourself.
No one will notice you’re gone anyway, no one will miss your scrawny paragraphs of overly digested and exhausted ideas, anyway. Because… what’s the use? It hardly counts for anything if you give so much and get so little. What’s the use of being the laughingstock of your friends? What’s the use of being the butt of everyone’s jokes? What’s the use of playing the designated fool in society’s figment fallacies? What’s the use of holding on to a rope that’s slipping away?
NAUGHT.
“Murder”, she wrote.
PHOTO CREDIT: Witty and Offensive By Neck Face. Neck Face is an anonymous street artist from the United States who had become known for his witty and irreverent artworks. His excellent but freaky illustrations are close to the knuckle, probably offensive to many, but this is a man who goes to extremes in the name of his art. For his Drinkin’ on the Job solo exhibition, Neck Face immersed himself day and night into bar culture, creating these works through an alcohol haze and the subsequent hangovers. That is true dedication!
