Reading harold_maude's journal

Very early this morning there was a conversation that took place.
It was about art and it's value.
Now what made this conversation interesting to me was that it took place in my head.
And as it happens when thoes kinds of conversations take place where I'm just the listening end of it and the people who are talking are people who I know and voices that are generated from articles and observations, I listen and often find that I too have my opinions about what's being disgussed.

I save my replys for my journals. It's the one place where I'm the only voice I'm dealing with.

The conversation went something like this "you should do something with your art" and "Your really good at that, you should sell your art" and "To achieve reality in your paintings you must do a,b and c" and "the only true artists are the one's who've gone to school to learn how to do art properly"
And this, "we only want to see your art if you have all thoes letters behind your name"...

The status quo. The right way to do it. This the only way to do it. (People who are in the position of teaching,who don't realize they are simply guides who are there simply to help people to find the art well in themselves, who should never be allowed to teach. Their true intrest is in reproducing themselves.
They need to be in a factory somewhere doing assembly line work, and deal with their inscurities that one of the students or several may surpass their ablities in creating.)

I have this crazy notion that simply by participating in the act of creating a person is doing something with their art.
They are doing it.

I think the next time someone says thoes stupid words to me, that I should be doing something with my art, I'm going to look at them and depending on if they are male or female, I'm going to say, hmmm, you have sperm/eggs, you should be out there doing something with it.
See what kind of reaction it produces.

I'm so tired of people looking at the creative process in terms how much money it can make.
I'm tired of artists denying how the art really wants to come out and enslaving themselves to what will be marketable or not.
That makes for nothing more then a bunch of great technitions.

If you really sat down with some of these people and asked them what kind of art they would be doing if what they secretly loved doing could make them money, I wonder what kinds of answers they would give.

There are so many works of art out there that are dead works because there is nothing of the artist present in the work other than the trained skill on the canvas.

The ones that are alive are the one's that grab you and shake you and make the insides of you do things.

It's a lovely thought that what you love others would too and get it in their head that what you love to create is worth money to them.
But if it never happens, is that any reason to stop creating and stop loving the act of creation?

I read a passage in a book once, the title is "Bird by Bird" I can't remember the authors name, but she was talking about the students that take her seminars on writing.
They always ask her about publishers and getting published.
Her response doesn't make them happy at all.
She says that they need to write for themselves above all else, and that they shouldn't think about writing to get published.

Many of them, she says, leave very disapointed. Somewhere in the mix, they have come to believe that this awesome gift inside them only has value if it gets published.

What a waste. And it's the same with thoes who do visual art.
We are told by galleries, magazines, jurried shows, that if we don't have something that is done a certian way so it can be marketed, what we do is of no value.

Children are taught this, unwittingly by their parents, and then by the school system and then by the market place.
And the really sad thing is they really believe it's true.

This giant machinery that decides if what you have in you has value or not. And if it doesn't then you need to stop doing it, or if you persist in doing it, call it a hobby.

How dedraging is that.

So here I am, flying in the face of the machinery, screaming with my life, that if you love it, and you participate in it, and flow with it and dance with it, and no matter how it looks to the rest of the world, it has value.
It's precious. It's beautiful and is worth just as much as the Mona Lisa.
Or Stary night. Or Falling Water. Or the statue of David.

It's priceless because it came from the same pool as thoes other works of art did.
The heart and the soul and the spirit inside a human being.
What you create is amazing.
And to look at it and compare it to anothers act of creation and deem it valueless is a sin against yourself and what you have inside you.

All of this self devaluation is a direct result of a realitivly few individuals with certian tastes who have for what ever reason been elevated to the position of deciding a work of art's value.

Did you know that a critic once told Van Gogh that his art was dog shit?

Immagine that. Immagine what would we would have missed out on if Vincent had listened to that crack pot.
If he had not been so emersed in the act of creation that was flowing out of him like a continual flood and listened to that critic he probably would have gone back to his flat and distroyed all the art and all the tools he used to create it.

That critic was part of the machinery. The same stupid machine that is still up and running today.

Do yourself a favor and stop listening to the machinery, and all it's agents.
If you love writing poetry, then do it. If you love to finger paint then do it, if you love writing novels that never get finished because you get too side tracked, do it.
If you love writing music, even if you never learn how to transcribe on paper what that music is, do it anyway.
If you love sewing and quilting and kniting because it's a joyful thing and makes you happy, keep doing it.
Don't ever let anyone convince you that what you create has no value if it's not marketable or doesn't look like the picture in the magazine.
If you love to cook or build things out of legos or design things that fall apart, and the fun part is watching it fall apart, or anything else that makes you an active part of that creative process inside you, do it.
And keep doing it.
Do it becasue it's a gift inside you. Do it because that's part of the creative package that you got when you were concieved.
And if it all comes down to you being the only audience you ever have, do it anyway.
You'll be a better, happier person because of it.

It's so hard for me when I listen to people who are terrified of their creativity. They are afraid of making a mistake.
They want it to look like the one in the magazine.
They can't draw because it doesn't look like this or that, or it's a waste of time.
It breaks my heart. It tears me up inside. And everytime I meet these people they tell me stories of what they used to do.
And when I ask them why they stopped they give me a long list of reasons.
And I want to scream and weep for the loss. I want to grab hold of them and tell them that who ever told them thoes things was wrong.
And that making mistakes is a learning process, and tell them about all the peices of art that I thought were mistakes at first and when I decited to see what would happen if I continued are the works that have blown me away in what unfolded in the end.
I want to take all thoes people who out of ignorance have done so much to kill the beauty of the creative process and flush their heads in several toilets until they stop doing the damage they do.

I want to take all thoes frustrated artists who are in teaching positions because they got rejected by galleries because what they were creating wasn't in vogue or wasn't a nice decorator peice, and tell them stop making your students pay for someone elses stupidity.
I want to tell them that they are only guides. That they can't teach creativity because it's as individual as the person and it's a gift that each human has.
That all they can do is show people the tools that are used and how they work and after that it's their responsiblity to encourage them to explore the creative well inside them.
And blow off the lid and tear away the box it's in, because it's the biggest christmas gift they got when they got created.

I want to tell anyone who will listen that just because how you create isn't what's popular or marketable, that doesn't mean that you should stop.
It just means that you have something that is rare and beautiful and something that no one else can take away from you.
Give yourself permission to aprove your art, what ever form it takes, and give your self permission to love the act of doing it smiply because you can.

What a waste it would be, if at the end of your life, you had missed all the wonders that are part of that gift simply because you had listened and believe someone who doesn't get to live inside your shoes or taste how good your creative cookies are.
They were and are created first for you, and then for anyone else you care to share them with.

That I believe is the fundemental essence of participating in the act of art.
Everything else shouldn't direct what you do with it.
And one final thought, if you have let thoes around you and the world tell you that what you create has no value because your not "doing" something with it,
do your self a huge favor and tell them to go stick it where the sun don't shine.

It only looks that way because your standing on your head.

This post was edited by harold_maude on Feb 16, 2005.