The question persists: Why does so much mediocre art successfully infiltrate from the mainstream of so-called high art?

We understand mainstream to mean the approved of art by the powers that be.

Regardless of venue and touted quality, mediocrity in whatever form is familiar and non-threatening in a culture weaned on advertising, exploitation, the next big thing, vicarious thrills, and where technique, ideology, and shock art are mistaken for the real thing—art.

Proving this to yourself counts as a basic lesson.

Most us have heard this: everything happens for a reason.

Agree? Disagree?

Of course, everything does happen for a reason—from the light bulb burning out to a selfless act of bravery to things from the dark side of the force.

When something wonderful happens to us, we rarely say it happened for a reason—which is a passive phrase most often connected to difficulties.

I suggest this approach: when some event ensnares you in a drama, it is you who must provide the reason, the lesson, and the meaning. This is power; this is art; and this is a life worth living.

In the Zen tradition, any teaching worth learning comes through intuitive feeling—not from Institutions, long winded speeches, or dialog. 

This, of course, makes sense when you realize that the same is true for great art.

No one can teach you how to be artist because no one can teach you how to be original. You must find your voice on your own.

This knowledge has great liberating power. I encourage you to use it.

From An Artist Empowered:

Although seemingly overlooked for years, there is a current renaissance of interest in the eccentric man who understood electricity. In the mid-1880’s, Nikola Tesla, a lanky twenty-eight-year-old Serbian immigrant and eccentric genius, nervously laid out his plans for alternating electric current (AC) to his hero, Thomas Edison.

However, Edison was already heavily committed to direct electric current (DC), a delivery system that was both cumbersome and inefficient. Edison gave the eager and penniless Tesla a job, but not why you might reason. He hired Tesla to keep him from further developing AC, which was clearly the superior technology.

After a brief time, Tesla quit working for Edison over two primary reasons: the AC issue and Edison’s failure to pay him a $50,000 premium for a select number of innovations he had developed for DC power.

Without hyperbole, indoctrination, or the need for years of training in a monastery, the kiteflier takes the line and instantaneously becomes one with the kite.

This is the Tao of kites, the irreducible arrangement of opposing forces that connect the flier to nature—the source of all that is.

Fly High, Land Gently!