Skip to content

Being Art

As artists, when we dawdle, we’re easily and quickly bored — or frustrated, and even defeated. The magic has a will and it will want to drive us deeply into the journey, but we have to take hold the reins and embrace uncertainty.

I find if I immerse myself in something, I want all of it. I want to know as much as possible, as quickly as possible. It’s useful, I think, to follow that excitement through its possibilities. Screw up as much as possible, right off the bat, and keep on absorbing, molding, learning. To those of us who have the experience of things generally coming easy to them, persistence can be a mountain unto itself. The danger is that the pursuit, the art, dares to become work.

Many things in life take a long, long time to grasp, appreciate, know and understand. Yet, one comes to accept that skills and abilities are always being refined: in music, our ears never stop maturing; in photography, our eyes; in writing, our words and honesty; in film, our storytelling and the capturing of moving light; in carpentry and construction, our hands, and our minds… In all things creative, it is a process of refinement and evolution.

It’s very easy to overthink and paralyze our own efforts. The purity of the process, and expansion of discovery is in the moment, not in the contemplation of where to begin. The muscles will remember. The mind and synapses will fire. The eyes and ears will focus when and where they need to.

Trust the flow. Go, create.

Solvitur ambulando