Focusing on the Making
The Fall is a tough time for me.
It's the anniversary of my brother's death, and always brings back difficult memories.
At the end of August, there was another sudden death of a young person in our family which has had me very depressed.
There are no words for losing a child or young person. It is not in the natural order of things.
Creating has provided me with hope when I thought there was none. At some fundamental level, it is all we have in the face of loss, despair, and grief.
Emily Dickinson wrote that depression is 'a funeral in the brain', and it does feel like that.
Art, and I know the word is problematic, is shorthand. The word is overloaded. It conjures up too many disparate notions - most associated with 'works of art' - a Picasso painting, a Victor Hugo novel. Behind it is a snobbish assumption that something must be 'good enough' to be considered 'art'.
But, for me, art is simply creating, making the intangible tangible. It is a process, not a product. Art, for me, is about the making itself.
For many, this might sound like nonsense.
We live in a performative culture; the assumption is that if we're creating anything, it must be, at some level, for others. The first thing that happens when you sit down and draw is, invariably, that someone comes and stands over your shoulder and says, 'That's so pretty.' or 'What is it?' or 'That's ugly.'
People judge, they can't help it.
In A History of Six Ideas (1980), Polish philosopher and art historian Wladyslaw Tatarkiewicz pointed out that there was no distinction between artist and artisan initially. Those who made art were people who worked with their hands. They were laborers. The Latin ars and Greek techne evoked the skill needed to create an object.
This changed in the 19th century, according to Tatarkiewicz, when art, notably paintings, became a store of value, objects worthy of investment. At this point, the 'artist' needed to be delineated from the artisan; high 'art' required separating 'mere' labor, i.e., artisanal work, and 'Art' with a capital A.
Today, it's easy to forget that when you create anything, it is fundamentally a process. You are transforming the abstract - a thought, feeling, memory, or idea - into a concrete object that can exist outside your mind.
It is a process that demands skill, patience, hope, and, sometimes, blind obsession.
Judgment kills that. The analytical mind can shred a kernel of inspiration to nothing.
It's too easy to forget the enormity of the act of creation. It is too easy to get caught up in whether whatever we've made is 'of value' or 'good enough.'
Over the past four years, I've put a lot of time and energy into external validation, into making sure what I was creating was 'good enough', which I now realize has nothing to do with why I create and is essentially out of my hands.
I know I would write stories, draw, and play music regardless if anyone else ever knew. Sometimes, I imagine I'll die with a drawer full of stories, and the thought doesn't scare me.
Stories are how I make sense of the world. Drawing calms me down when my mind won't stop. Music soothes me when I'm too sad to speak and don't have any words to say.
My focus for the last quarter of this year will be getting back to focusing on the making, on the process of creating, rather than the result.
Art4Accountability Update:
I'm glad my work project is coming to an end this week.
While I've learned a lot over the past month, I admit I'm exhausted and depressed. While I did get through Fairy Tale, and the EoE draft this month, I still have to finish the YA Horror WIP and the five illustrations - which I'm pushing to Q4.
I plan to take more time over the next quarter to focus on writing and (hopefully) drawing and reconnecting with what's truly important to me.
I wish you all the best over the next month.
Take care of yourselves. Life is short.