Audacity

"We all fear death and question our place in the universe. The artist's job is not to succumb to despair, but to find an antidote for the emptiness of existence. "

by Gertrude Stein in the movie 'Midnight in Paris'.

The most interesting duality or should I rather call it choice that is currently offered to me by the universe (for the lack of a better word) is firstly the idea of hard work and structural thinking, following recipes to success and succumbing to reason. On the other hand, that which got me here in the first place, call it passion, call it talent, call it expression still remains the main focus of this expedition. Or does it really? The main focus initially was to just be able to be and to better one's being and find creative ways to do so. It is a constant wrestle between focusing all your efforts to find a place in this social structure that you as artist are comfortable with (what a contradiction) and fight of the nostalgic and bizarre indulgences that make you aware of your unusual presence within this existence, playing with life as if it was a puppy dog dressed in pink latex busy killing a bird. You are the bird.

How do I have the audacity to call myself an artist. It was a description I gave to myself. No one confirmed it or labeled me. 

We are taught in today's academia that throwing together some words and phrases of what label:important people have said gets you to a well rounded conclusion. It is essentially reordering and re-quoting information about a topic and receiving credit for finding it. An interesting phenomenon: Research. But how about the inner knowledge that gets lots? The ideas we wondered about that are unstructured. Yes some of us find it again and possibly understand it better but feel it less. An example is appropriate: A very talented young boy plays piano without having lessons. He is self taught. He composes songs in his head and plays them. His parents decide to give him the opportunity to receive formal lessons which he takes. Years later the boy is a master of his instrument. But everything he composes is based on a structure that he was taught is right and he understands. What happened with the untrained, unfiltered intrinsically felt knowledge he had before?

This post is not supposed to be about what is right and wrong as these things can not be defined in the amount of space I have available here. It is opinionated and might offend, and I am sorry if it does.  But what this post is all about is trusting your intuition for a change, that funny tummy feeling we experience. I know that mine is pretty spot on in 70% of cases as I would not know if it would be all the time as I only listen to it 70% of the time. It feels that sometimes we are blocking calls from the inside, and how rude is that? You would never willingly and/or without reason reject a phone call by a dear friend who just wants to say 'hi'?

But does it get me there? No, but definitely somewhere if I can decide!