“Because we don’t know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustable well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that is so deeply part of your being that you can’t even conceive of your life without it. Perhaps four or five times more, perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps 20. And yet it all seems limitless.”

From The Sheltering Sky
—Paul Bowles

You respect others in equal measure—busboy or museum director or patron. In turn, you earn and expect the same.

You treat all with identical consideration despite their station in society or whether they can do something for you, or not. As a true artist, you are a common man, and while that is no easy task, this knowledge liberates you from the false masks of personality. You have one authentic face that reveals your true self.

Bravo!

Is an artist born or made?

While you may be born an artist doesn’t mean you have discovered that being an artist is your dharma, or purpose in life. There are many distractions.

In the main, family and society follow a program of conformity, a rigid form of unrelenting pressure that does not support the artist and his work. An artist must not only possess talent, he must have the courage to manifest that talent in the world. Without an unbending will to create and continue creating, the artist is lost, and no one can save such a victim from himself. 

When I began writing for a living, I used to think: How much easier it must be for a painter. After all, the patron looks at the art as a gestalt. Point and click in the mind’s eye. With writing, an editor must carefully read, a time-consuming effort that all too often falls on eyes that do not comprehend.

As fortune would have it, years later I would learn my presumption about writing and painting had been totally off. It wasn’t any easier for the fine artist than it was for the author with an original voice. Getting noticed and being understood had nothing to do with measuring time or paying attention. It had to do with awareness and seeing the alphabet of any true artist.

Taking it further over the years, I not only learned that getting attention as a fine artist wasn’t easier than the written word, it was, in many ways, more difficult.

The Savannah is hot, and the lion pride is hungry. A herd of gazelle grazes nearby. The hunt begins. After the kill, the big cats feed until they are stuffed.

The lions find the shade of a tree and roll onto their backs to sleep off the meal. But, the lions are tormented by another bloodthirsty creature.

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