Art is, and must be considered as, a serious concern. The ability to speak about art and its uses is just one way of interacting with it, deepening personal or collective pleasure.
For months now I’ve been seeking my life in art. A productive, enriched life. Lots of reading, writing, doing. The whole thing. The input’s been solid while the output’s stalled as a result of various material and mental obstacles.
Now I want, again, to approach the work as work. To discipline myself in the glorious pursuit.
In order to finally realize my goal of situating myself in community with other artists, I’ve put together some foundational questions. Hopefully by asking these questions of myself and others, I can create a space of consistent, generative creativity and a structure of disciplined accountability for my own creative work.
What is the origin of yr tendency toward the life in art?
What does ideal, sustainable productivity look like for you?
What is yr current focus? Current goal?
What time of day is most conducive to yr creative expression?
What does yr input and output flow look like? (What you’re reading, listening to, watching, etc. vs what you’re creating.)
What pitfalls recur and cause tension in yr personal relationship with the work itself? How can these be avoided and overcome?
I aspire mostly to broaden my sources of inspiration. It is my belief that all works of art are inherently in conversation with one another. When I listen to a song, attend a live performance, study a painting, watch a movie, do anything in the artistic realm, I gain some understanding that can be applied to my poetry.
Even interactions with other people achieve this effect. Hypothetical questions, deep conversations, jokes, tangents, infodumps— these all stimulate the creative mind and bring us into meaningful community!
Negative capability is a concept I reference frequently. To be brief, I’ll use Wikipedia’s definition here:
The capacity of artists to pursue ideals of beauty, perfection and sublimity even when it leads them into intellectual confusion and uncertainty.
In other words, relinquishing the need to know.
For a while, I think I felt that my life in art needed to be solitary because I had not yet built solid relationships with other poets. Despite having creative people in my life, I felt a sense of disconnect. How can we really share these moments without complete context? How can I appreciate your painting if I don’t understand the style; how can you appreciate my poetry if you’re not sure what I’m trying to achieve?
Using negative capability as the driving force behind my interactions now, these insecurities melt away. Every person, and certainly every artist, has the ability to be moved by something and not know why, to be outside of something and still receive it as sublime.
In its mundanity and its grandiosity, its fallibility and importance, art is a serious concern. In living my life by its rhythm, I aim not to be an ascetic scholar of some esoteric, distant thing.
The goal is, and has always been, to remain close to the ecstasy of expression. Whether it is my shout or yours that ephemerally pierces the dark, let us usher in the same light, and be warmed together by it.