Thursday’s Seeds: Have you suffered for your art?

Yes

I’ve worked my butt off on books that aren’t yet published because funds ran out.

I’ve placed projects on hold knowing what it takes to unwind a mind to relax enough to get to the heart of creativity.  It takes months of meditation and self-reflection plus hard work on getting your habits in line. Sure there is the healing of the other things within life. The life tools to heal and also cope with what life hands each of us.

Covid alone should be enough suffering for those in the art or creative industries. It’s not all there is though.

No

The other answer is that NO, I haven’t suffered enough. I’m back working on it and resistance has me by the gullet. I’m doing things I know I shouldn’t. Taking risks that from a business standpoint, aren’t good for anyone. The losses of doing that though, take me back up to the suffered for your art category.

There is no man in my life. The loneliness is real and yet, as long as those characters talk to me in my head, I’m really not alone. Don’t judge if you think voices in your head means your certifiable. I hope that’s an old fashioned set of thoughts and that we all know more about the mental capacity of the humans around us to know that even if we truly are talking to ourselves and answering, that this only means that new skills are around the corner. 

Have you ever held a conversation with someone that had parallels in that you were holding dialog down about two different subjects at the same time?  We do it with text all the time and then misunderstand each other. That’s suffering. Not sure if it’s art but it certainly happens. 

There is a cat staring me down as I write because she thinks that the pretzels on the table belong to her. She’s very disturbed by the fact that there is a laptop and tapping going on keeping her from this bowl of goodies.  There is stress energy in this. Boundaries kit cat, move on. I caved in. She’s happy and I’m happy and work gets done then. She didn’t need more than one. If she did, this would have been a bad decision because I’d be doing this again and hitting the same cycle again.

Back to the Yes category,  I did not have to worry about going somewhere out of obligation and I also didn’t have to change my schedule for another. Will I get so used to this that I won’t want to connect with others? I doubt it. This is a short season. I need to capitalize on it and keep going. There is much work that needs to be done in this art business. It’s not just the creation of the amazing but also the running of a business to ensure that it’s a viable product that can be sold.

My mindset is changing in strides. And this blog post is sounding more like a journal entry than it is a post article. It could be that the final edit will be shorter than I thought.

It might not be an article at all. It might get shortened to a poem when it is all said and done. The Blathering of the cat probably won’t even be in it.

This is also an exercise in trusting yourself. That the work that comes out will in the end be useful to those around you, even if it’s only for a good laugh.

Something that Helen Warwick wrote in a poem to her father goes something like this:

Are you fishing for dreams?

Let every dream have a fighting chance

But settle only for the biggest and best

It’s a good dream-fishing day. 

 

Who is this Helen? She wrote this at 16 years old but at 18 years old, coming home from college, she was in a fatal auto accident. Suffering for your art means caring about stories like this. Even if you aren’t directly connected to them. The best art comes from those with empathic hearts.

I love my city. I call it the “city of trees.” Atlanta Botanical Gardens has a sculpture of this girl. Among my late mother’s things, I’ve found her story and this poem. And isn’t it fitting to share?

One of the last times my Mother and I were at the Gardens, she looked for this sculpture. Helen is missed by people who don’t even know her. And her art, I celebrate here as I miss and mourn my own Mother.