A Walk Through the Forest

I've been filling my time up with three main activities: Playing Pokemon, rereading some of my favorite books, and searching for some form of employment. Two of these three activities have been successful, and I don't think you need to think to hard to guess which one has been a flop. I'm not terribly stressed about it, though. As much as I genuinely do want to work, I don't at all mind the downtime either. With my parents working, my younger sister at school, and my older sister and brother in law doing their own thing, the house is quiet. That sounds pretty obvious, but trust me, between the girls of my family (who can and will talk your ear off) and the student teachers that have in the past lived with us, the house normally had some form of noise going on. It wasn't obnoxious, but it wasn't exactly what I would call peaceful.

So I've been doing a lot of writing and a lot of thinking. You'll get to see the writing before too long, but only after I think it's "done". I put the term in quotation marks, because as Leonardo da Vinci once said,  

"Art is never finished. Only abandoned."

 I think that's true for a number of different reasons. The first reason being that the artist will always have more to express. This artist could choose to express that idea (or set of ideas) all through one piece, but that then risks spoiling the purity of the expression found in a particular single piece. Thus, the best choice for the artist is to continue the work in another piece. Whether the artist ever realizes it or not, all of her pieces are interconnected because of that one intrinsic feature.

Another reason that art is never finished is that once the artist has chosen to abandon a specific piece, she leaves everything up to the eyes or ears of the audience. It's very scary, being a painter or singer, a writer, sculptor, or speaker. You are revealing your real self to your audience whenever you display your work. Each time you put work out there, you essentially open the door so that anyone may come in and say "Listen here, bub, this sucks and I'm going to tell you every reason why."

In a way, every artist is walking through a deep, dark, dense, damp forest. I don't mean a bunch of trees outside a schoolyard, I'm talking an Old Growth forest where the trees are so ancient that they block out light from the sun so smaller plants rarely grow beneath the huge blanket of branches and leaves. The kind of forest that you might be scared to walk through-- not because of what could be in there, but because you fear altering some part of it. Every artist's soul is like that forest. Each branch, root, bird, beast and insect hums with life.

Walking through the forest is intimidating, but through practicing their art, they are able to traverse, map, and really familiarize themselves with the forest and navigate it and travel from one area to another, eventually coming to a completely different and new region: the soul of another. Through art, the artist discovers herself and this helps her come closer to others.

My art is mainly through words, as you all have seen. I always feel like it's not very good, but I try and get it out there so I can become better and better. I try and connect (albeit indirectly) with my readers, and with other artists, by just writing a lot, whether I think it's shit or I think it's enough to make Ralph Waldo Emerson roll in his grave.

I haven't forgotten about the original purpose I gave this blog: To use my words to fight for what I know is right. Even if it seems subtle or even absent, I am sharpening my blade with every stroke of the key.

"Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through."
— Ira Glass