I have been in the doldrums in terms of studio practice. There is no wind to push me onward, my vessel has been sacked by vicious swells, my sails ripped, and I have been floating motionless and uncertain for most of the past month. Voices in my head are at war: one side is telling me to walk away, the other is pleading not to give up.
After Damascus, I don't know if I have anything left to say. Recent disappointments weigh a bit too heavy on my soul, and the road ahead (graduate school) seems narrow enough with family, much less an art practice and all that comes with it. I am still toying with shuttering the studio in January, putting everything in storage and accepting a 2-year hiatus. And yet hope, that cruel lover, persists in whispering in my ear. Two decades down the line only to abandon it all, what then?
People tell me it is purely location. To an extent that is true. My overtures to NYC were neither unsuccessful nor ignored. Yet the effort is costly to maintain, and for most of this year I simply haven't had the means. There is no market for my work locally, perhaps even regionally. I spent years trying to break into Atlanta with no success. For the past 2 or 3 years I've simply retreated into the studio and have stopped reaching out altogether.
I am not a person who backs down easily. Tenacity (and perhaps sometimes pride) has always propelled me to overcome life's obstacles. When I realized that art was the thing, -the purpose if you will, of my life I dug in and I've never looked back. Yet human arms can only fight the currents for so long without a lifeline. Eventually we are consumed and sink into the depths.
The irony perhaps is that the world, now as much as ever, needs artists. Real artists who make us uncomfortable and do not merely entertain or provoke for provocation's sake. There are so very few, and fewer still whose work is truly meaningful and pure and cut from authenticity with sweat and blood and anguish and alienation. I'm not suggesting artists have to be unhappy people, what I am saying is that artists can rarely, if ever, be satisfied people. This time is a pivot point where new paradigms are rising. Art gives meaning and context to these movements, and it offers understanding.
I see our country in a state of unraveling. Our time as Empire is drawing to an end. 20 years ago that statement in some obscure blog or even in print wouldn't carry much weight or get noticed; now it borders on sedition to even utter it. So few people possess an understanding of art, partly because of the Art World's intentional insulation; money, power, blah, blah. Partly because we have purged cultural education from our schools. We're producing entire generations incapable of appreciating beauty and experience. They watch reality television yet seldom, if ever, seek any truth.
My time away last weekend was healing and steels me for the immediate road ahead. Yet there is this numb dissatisfaction that aches in my belly. If not through art, how will I be?
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