Artists are in the business of the Beautiful. What is Beauty?
The Beautiful relies on and cannot be separated from Truth.
Figuring out what is true is requires self-autopsy. It requires many questions we’d rather not ask, digging further towards our core than we feel comfortable digging, in attempt to become painfully honest.
To be honest is to be extremely vulnerable.
To be vulnerable, one must be brave.
Art requires bravery because one must break the pattern by which we live our lives:
“Hi, how are you?”
“I’m fine.”
I’m Stephanie. You’re John.
One must take a mallet to the thick sheet of ice that lies on the surface, which is all anyone sees of us. One must figure out how they actually feel about their parent’s divorce, what they really think about black people, white people, about law, about God, about death, about ourselves.
This is terrifying because (a) we are often unsure of a lot more than we’d like to admit, and (b) because our image is at stake when we slop our messy gut-findings onto the table in plain view. We risk being judged, or worse, being ostracized, discriminated against because of how we really feel, what we really think. We risk being labeled abnormal, even ugly.
In a sense, when we decide to make something beautiful, we, in turn, may become uglier.
To decide to be an artist is no light matter. It requires someone with great courage. We must be willing to put our entire identity on the line for the sake of what is beautiful, for the sake of proclaiming what we have found in ourselves to be true.
Why make this sacrifice? Surely no one requires it of us. Most, in fact, live and die perfectly comfortable within the status quo, never sticking their pinky toe into this messy stuff.
Why do we choose this path? Because telling our truth, something that comes uniquely, solely and beautifully from each of ourselves, is the single most valuable thing we can think to contribute to this world while we’re in it.
Continue on, artists. The truth is worth whatever the cost.
