Artist Life

Artist Life is...

. Being unable to eat, sleep or even control your breathing due to the INTENSITY that you feel you must create art.

. Being nervous about spending $0.99 on an app that will provide a few hours of entertainment, but you cannot pull out your credit card fast enough for a multi-book binding of three 14th Century cooking manuscripts for $100.00.

. Having to pause moments of your day to jot down notes or ideas, as brief bouts of inspiration hit due to random circumstance.

. Meeting a fellow artist, and spending hours just enjoying the shop talk and sharing of knowledge with a new friend. But when someone asks you later who you were talking to...not remembering their name because you realize you forgot to ask it,

. Hating the things that people praise the most, because you feel the praise is unjustified.

. A whole host of superstitions from years of work that infect your every move when creating art. Examples being specific chairs you must sit in to write, temperature/humidity to compose music to, just the right amount of clothing in the right spots to feel inspired to write.

. Seeing the world in a completely alien way than most of the population...and the learning to cope with that separation. 

. Flying into a rage because you could not properly explain to your loved ones the vision you have, the artistic mindset you wish to impart.

. Weeping at the chance to spend weeks of your life slaving away on a project that will perhaps only be experienced by people once, to be put on display for a majority who will never know the pints of blood poured into the task. 

For me, the biggest thing is seeing the world differently. And it's not so much a physical change in what I see...I see the boats on the water just like everyone else. It's just so much more than that.

I see the boats on the water, water stained gold and red with the light of a dying day. The water surges up the side of each ship, bleeding the promise and dreams of deeds done that day before becoming swallowed by the black night and the promise of death. Each ship drifts along, sailing despite the dying day, continuing its journey despite setbacks because it is confidant that with death must follow a new life and a new day. Some boats are pure of heart, some shadowed in an inner darkness reflected out, some striving for that purely human element of the middle which we must all arrive in. Some sails are unfurled to learn what it can of the knowledge of wind, some lowered to trust their own steering of the rudder. Always sailing, forever along the ocean of life and death. 

This is Artist Life.