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What is it to be an artist?I admire art. I'm writing reviews of illustrative artists right now and myheart sinks when I see mastery, true mastery.One of my major conflicts in life is this.I want to create, but to create freely.But ultimately. I want to be myself. I want to be myself in everything Ido, every sentence I write, every gesture I make, every person I speakwith.Herman Hesse, a great, self-realized artist, wrote:I only wanted to follow the promptings of my true self, why was that sodifficult? That statement conveys my entire existence.My mother was an artist. She never reached her peak however. Shehad a disease which robbed her of the years it would take to reach alevel of mastery in her art. With enough time, my mother would havebecome a great artist.She struggled. She was like me. She had a compulsive drive to create. The compulsion comes from a deep, wrenching desire to express; andat the same time, the inability to fully express. This is the conflictinside of every artist.It is the struggle that won't let me fall asleep. Because I have to write.Something. I don't know what it is yet. But it's there inside of me,barking, screaming, crying, aching, swearing.Even the illustration artists whom I revere like Yuko Shimizu, the oneswho appear to have mastered their art, they still struggle with theinability to fully express. Because full expression goes beyond skill,beyond talent.It is the spiritual side that eludes the artist, no matter what theirpowers may be. It is the novelist who, after writing twenty-five novels,still feels like a beginner.And for those artists who overwhelm us with their talents, Nabokovuses the expression "the dubious splendors of virtuosity". Meaning,those who flaunt their powers are suspect.
 
Art is a deeply personal thing. We must connect with the artwork. It isnot about the artist. It is about the connection.It's 4:22 in the morning. I cannot sleep. The wrenching, agonizingdesire to write, to express something, has kept me awake. Until I writethis, I cannot shut my eyes in peace.Maybe this sounds overly-dramatic of me. But it is true. On most days,the day is half over before I even get out of bed. I was writing the nightbefore.What I want is driving me, it's a Morpheus-like god. Subtly forming andtransforming in dreams. Never concrete enough for me to take hold of it.My ex-girlfriend came over the other day. Having lived with her foralmost a year, I'm familiar with her struggle--the particular troubles hercharacter lends itself to.Heraclitus: Character is fate.Her struggle is transparent to me; just as mine is opaque. I don't seemy own struggle. She sees right though me. I am transparent to her.I told her that I believed each of of us were married to our ownstruggles. And we can't escape them because it is who we are.I don't think she was listening. She may have been listening to herstruggle.But I'm a philosopher and I like to think about life as if I were lookingdown over the whole perplexed human drama and adding mycommentary.Maybe there is no connection. Maybe some of us really don't have"struggles" as I like to think of them in the grand and over-archingsense.Right now I consider myself successful in one area of my life--mybusiness. But no matter how successful I am in that one area, I willalways look at the part where I feel I'm not successful."There must be something wrong. I've got to fix that."But what is success? And what am I not successful in?
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