One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice –
Mary Oliver’s words from her poem “The Journey” whisper in the back of my mind. They are spoken in the voice of David Whyte, from a recording that was given to me by a counselor when I was not yet 20. A recording of poetry intended for people in “late-ish middle age”. It was a tape copy she had made herself. I listened to it constantly. I guess I was some kind of “old soul” because this recording of self help poetry for middle aged people has stuck with me for decades now. (You can listen to it here. I highly recommend it.)
I’m full of voices. Most of them distinctively unhelpful. I lay on the couch, still in my robe and pajamas even though it’s late afternoon, and the voices weigh me down. A variety of voices that have come to me explicitly and implicitly over the decades from peers, teachers, friends, enemies, family, strangers, bosses, books, tv shows, advertisements, memes. Voices I trust and respect have said some of the most hurtful things, and voices of strangers have said some of the most helpful.
People give advice, good, bad, helpful, thoughtful, insightful, thoughtless, meaningless, empty.
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
I’ve been thinking about quitting being a professional artist. I’ve literally been trying for 27 years, and guys, I’m tired.
I’m tired of the social media circus, jumping through hoops of algorithms, making videos, screaming into the void. Twitter is failing, Facebook is dying, Instagram is bloated, TikTok is ridiculous. Maybe Tumblr will get me an audience. The rich are siphoning money from the rest of us. Nobody can afford anything. Everyone is stressed, depressed, overworked, underpaid. Discourse is toxic. People are scared and angry.
I have multiple health issues, some physical, some psychological, that I battle every single day which make it hard to get out of bed, and when I do get out of bed, I make coffee and breakfast and then end up on the couch, but this time I laid down because sitting up on the couch hurts my back. I’ve had this back injury for months.
“You’ve been doing this for decades, I don’t know why you keep trying. It’s just a pipe dream.”
“It’s OK to give up! You don’t have any spoons!”
“You manifested failure with your bad attitude. If you think positive, you will succeed!”
“Thinking you could succeed is just confirmation bias and probably other logical fallacies! For every successful artist you see, thousands have failed!”
“It’s all moot, late stage capitalism and climate change are going to bring everything down. You’ll be lucky to have food in a few years.”
“Draw more cats! People like cats!”
“There’s really no point. It’s meaningless.”
“Getting your hopes up isn’t worth it. Failing hurts more than it’s worth.”
“Seriously, you have ADHD, depression and anxiety. You aren’t going to make it in this dog-eat-dog world!”
“Don’t talk about this. It’s blood in the water. The public are like sharks. They smell weakness. They will chew you up and spit you out!”
“You aren’t even that good.”
“I don’t get it…”
“YOU?! You aren’t going to make it. I don’t know who you think you are.”
“You are so privileged! Other people have it so much worse! I don’t know why you are complaining.”
“Getting an art degree was so stupid! Now you just owe a lot of money, and for what? Absolutely nothing.”
“I know someone who is successful and it’s because they were rich and they knew people…”
“It’s not what you know, it’s who you know!”
“I knew a guy who went down to the dock and painted rich people’s yachts, and then got commissioned. You should do that!”
“You are leeching off of other people and society. You should be ashamed of yourself!”
Those are the nice ones. The helpful voices. The people who care about me. Voices from people I love and respect, whose opinions I listen to because I know they care about me.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
The crueller voices, the darker voices sit right on my chest.
“You are lazy, a space cadet, a loser.”
“Failure. You keep trying and it has never come to anything.”
“Weirdo! Loser! Stupid! Nobody likes you! You are fat and ugly and you have a fat butt.”
“You are a slob, a gluttonous fat gross disgusting slob. Nobody cares what you have to say.”
“Get a job, loser! Nobody wants to work! You just want handouts!”
“Everyone is laughing at you. Judging you.”
“You are so arrogant! You think so highly of yourself! You need to be taken down a few notches!”
“Libtard! Commie! You are destroying our country!”
“Your work is so stupid! What is this? Furries? Hahahaha!”
It gets worse. One persistent voice, a deep one, wrapped in barbed wire and dripping with acid. It courses through my veins. It comes from deep inside. It is all the other voices coalesced into one resounding chant:
“Kill yourself. Kill yourself. Kill yourself.”
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
These thoughts aren’t occasional. They don’t just arise on bad days. They ebb and flow, like tides, but they never really go away. Some days, it takes so long to get up and work because I have to argue with each and every one, and each one, even in my own head, has a comeback. Nobody even needs to say anything anymore. It’s all in there. But people still say stuff, and it magnifies these voices. My own brother very recently said something like “But you’ve been doing this for 10 years…” when I told him that businesses rarely make a profit before 2 years. (Actually I’ve been doing it for 27, but thank you for the encouragement.)
I listen to loud music or podcasts or watch TV when I work to drown them out.
But little by little,
as you left their voice behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
Somewhere inside, though, another voice, calm, clear, a bright star in a black void says
“Well, maybe. But hey, here’s another art idea!”
When I make art, the voices start to quiet. My brain starts to calm. I remember a few times in my life, I stopped making art for a few months, and my mental health deteriorated. I have to make art. Some people don’t. I don’t make it to get attention. I make it because something in me requires it.
Despite all of this. Despite surviving trauma, poverty, stress, illness. Despite having to take care of my ailing mom for over a decade. Despite being bullied. Despite my multiple mental health acronyms, despite over a dozen different physical ailments, I have made so much art I don’t even know where to store it.
I’ve filled hundreds of sketchbooks. I’ve done hundreds of paintings, thousands of drawings and sketches. A lot of it is terrible. Some of it is pure garbage. Some of it is mediocre. But it’s mine. I made it. I made so much of it, I am seriously going to just have a big giveaway some day, because maybe it will be in better hands than rotting in a storage unit.
If I lose my hands, I’ll make art with my feet. If I end up as a slave in a factory, I’ll sneak 10 minutes of drawing on a napkin. If I lose my eyes, I’ll make some other kind of art.
If the world is turned to ash, I’ll make art with the charcoal.
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own, that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
The fact that I haven’t given up after flailing and falling and failing for nearly 30 years is not a sign of stupidity or weakness. It isn’t a sign that I’m a stupid loser. It certainly isn’t a sign of cowardice or laziness.
Making art is simply as much a part of who I am as the color of my eyes. My creativity is a gift, even if it doesn’t do anything but make me and a few people smile along the way in this brutal world, while the machine grinds us into dust. The only thing for me to do is to amplify the helpful voices, and to just keep making art. My art, not yachts or whatever “people buy”, because that defeats the purpose.  It doesn’t matter if I get an office job or not. I make art BECAUSE none of it matters. Because the only philosophical conclusion that ever really stuck for me is that we make our own meaning in this world, and that’s one of the ways I do it.
My art may change.  Maybe I will stop drawing for awhile. I’m not just a visual artist. I have a ton of other projects that nobody really knows about. Maybe I’ll finish the book I’m writing, or finally learn how to sing so I can share the songs I wrote, or make a book of all my old poetry. Maybe I’ll make a short film. Maybe I’ll write a play.
Even if I do stop some day, it will be because I find meaning and joy in something else, and that’s OK too. Identity is fluid, life is fluid.
But art cannot and should never be seen through the lens of capitalism. I have not reached economic success from my work. I have no awards. I am not well known. I have generally spent far more than I make. I’m not a failure because my work isn’t paying my bills. I’m not a loser because I don’t have 100k instagram followers. It would be really nice to make a living on my work some day, only because then I’ll have more time to work on it, and I won’t have to do a job that I don’t like. But you know what? I also like teaching, so if I end up making a living on that instead, that’s OK too.
I haven’t failed at all. I’ve literally made hundreds of successful pieces of art. Some of them nobody has ever even seen, and that’s OK. They are successful for the sole reason that I was happy with them, and nothing else. I am a successful artist because I make art. I’m even luckier because I make art that I like.
determined to do
the only thing you could do --
determined to save
the only life that you could save.
PS: It’s always worth watching Neil Gaiman’s “Make Good Art” speech. I’d like to add that I don’t agree that the art has to be good.
PPS: This is one of my most recent works. I’ve been making art about trash since 2003. This has everything to do with what I just wrote. There is something about being unapologetic about who you are, even if others perceive you as garbage or vermin.Â
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