Creating

When I was high school, I had a humanities teacher, who passed on an insight that has stuck with me;

A true artist doesn’t create great work, a true artist is always creating work.

This idea is always bouncing around the back of my head. The older I get, and the more I learn about the artist that I respect, I find that all of them, pretty much, fall into the guidelines of the insight. True artists are always making something. Either it is a compulsion to create things, or like Tom Wolfe, who wrote 10 pages a day, no matter what. They create.

So… I have to create all the time then.

I have been trying to get better, not that I think I am in the “true artist” group, but I feel more artist than not…

Which gets me to this old debate that I have been having with myself, and other, since high school, what is an artist? And can I consider myself one?

“No one should call themselves an artist unless they are paid for it.” – I think that’s how the line goes in KAFKA.

I do think it is like acting, such as the hardest part is just committing to character, and leaving all pretense of yourself behind. If you want to call yourself an artist, then you just have to own it, right?

I didn’t mean for this to happen, but I think I’m giving a pep talk to myself now…