It’s funny how it sometimes takes a long time to understand things that are right in front of your face. I’ve lived around artists of one sort or another, visual artists, musicians, actors, writers, for most of my life. I have observed the way they interact with each other and the rest of the world. I’ve known since I was eight years old that artists were usually more flawed than “normal” people. But when it came to my idols, be they rock musicians or science fiction writers or film makers, I was blinded by my admiration. I didn’t see that they were only human.
As many of my idols get older and die I am beginning to appreciate how great they were to create their exceptional art in spite of their human foibles. I am left humbled and even a little bit ashamed of myself. I let the petty details of life stand between me and the artist that I wanted to become. I gave up on filmmaking, acting, music, and writing. I continued to dabble but I quit putting my heart into it.
Now I’ve reached a point in life when my career is winding down and I am beginning to understand the way of the artist. I realize that I’ve been creating my entire life. I’ve just been hiding my talent away. Part of the challenge of being a professional artist is putting your art out there to be seen (or heard) and commented on by other people. It’s hard putting part of yourself on display like that.
I was given the incredible gift of learning to be an actor at the age of eight. After two summers of summer stock, I was over the hard part of live performance, being intimidated by an audience.
I played guitar professionally for three summers in western theme parks. I supported my spouse when she took her arts and crafts to craft shows. I knew how to engage the customers and sell our product. It was all performance of one sort or another.
But after all these years, I have finally realized that I have lost the knack of putting my art out there for people to appreciate. I am working on regaining the knack by writing these blog posts and various stories. I realize that there is a lot of work to be done. Much to be learned about crafting stories that engage people’s attention. That contain characters that they love and want to see succeed at whatever endeavor that they set out to accomplish.
I understand that we only grow as people by meeting and overcome the challenges that we are faced with. And furthermore, the characters in our stories are the same way. They need challenges and adversity to grow and become the people that we want them to become. After all, these characters are all just proxies for us and our aspirations. When they win, so do we.
Sweet dreams, don’t forget to tell the ones you love that you love them, and most important of all, be kind.