Live Your Passion

IF YOU’RE BEING A CUNT, IT’S ‘CAUSE YOUR JOB IS TO BE AN ARTIST

I struggle, oftentimes, more often than I care to admit, with people.

I kind of … hate being around them. It’s not a hatred OF people, I don’t think, but more a feeling that they are in some way going to take something from me.

My energy.
My peace, or ability to get to it.
My stillness.
Maybe even my soul!

Perhaps you can relate, but before you nod your head at those awful TAKERS, here’s where I sometimes think I might just seriously be messed UP.

I’m not talking about people who are in some sort of potentially real way trying to take from you.

I’m talking about random people, any people, kind of ALL people, who are just, well – existing nearby. And who maybe look at you … breathe near you … talk loudly or laugh or just, well, be.

Yep.
If it wasn’t already known far and wide, let it be known:

I can be kind of an asshole. At least inside my head. Okay, who am I kidding; it definitely creeps out and makes itself known sometimes!

But I wonder –

Do you struggle with this as well? It’s terribly un-PC to admit that you get pissed off with some poor person for doing precisely NOTHING except BEING … or, as if that weren’t already bad enough, for asking if you need something, say in a cafe, or for even doing what you’ve paid them to do, i.e. washing your hair, but for somehow managing to do it in a way where it just, well, it just isn’t good!

You know?

And I feel, at times –

As though there really is something wrong with me.

That I so often just want the WHOLE WORLD TO GO AWAY.

That I get so JUMPY when somebody wants something from me, even if their WANTING is to in fact serve or support me.

For example, the waitress who just now brought my salad … all she did was smiled and put it down and said what it was. She didn’t grill me. She didn’t hover. She didn’t use extra words. She did her job BEAUTIFULLY, and still I had that slight feeling of wanting to shrink away, protect myself, be in an invisible bubble, my cells scared and wanting to be left the fuck ALONE.

Is that weird? Is it wrong? Is it BAD?

These are not questions to YOU, they’re rhetorical if you like, they are things I wonder in my mind, when I veer between marveling at just how much shit which is NOT even shit I can somehow manage to let get to me, and then back into remembering –

Oh
that’s right
I’m an artist

THE WORLD NEEDS TO FUCK OFF AND LET ME BE ALONE, WITH MY ART!

I’ve written, or perhaps read, or both, on this, many times.

About the peculiar madness that comes with being an artist
About the VIOLENT need to be alone WITH our art, left to ruminate with it until it comes out
About how we need whatever the fuck we NEED in order to prepare internally and in all ways until it can and DOES come out, and only once it has FULLY unleashed itself can we then consider – at all – stepping cautiously into the world

being seen
spoken to
breathed near
energetically DEMANDED from, in even the smallest way and even if for our own benefit!

it sounds like excuse making
it sounds CRAZY
it sounds ridiculous

to imply that I, or you, AS an artist, should need such precious care taken with our precious souls, but then again –

if you open and close an oven door even once, even lightly, whilst baking a souffle, you fuck that shit UP

if you breathe near me or (GOD) talk to me, or honestly even exist in ANYTHING less than an absolutely removed way near me, while my art is brewing, you fuck that shit UP

this is artist reality.

but there is also this part of it, and this may be less fun to acknowledge; whereas the above, while fully labeling us as mad, is also easy to nod your head to; so true is it.

the less fun bit:

it’s on you.
well, not my stuff, that’s on me 🙂

if I need to be left alone for my art, I need to give that to mySELF, not require it of the world
if I need space to let things simmer and brew, then I need to allow that space
if I need the whole world to fuck the fuck OFF and not breathe near me, then it is ME who gets to fuck the fuck off … stay away … and listen, then HONOUR, what is needed, from within

In a very real sense, to ask, and give permission to, whatever the artist, the muse, the art itself NEEDS

In a very PRACTICAL sense, this means, quite simply, that if you want to honour your job AS an artist, and if you want to allow your art to be made to LIVE, you must be willing to walk away from things

to cancel things
to ignore things
to go against the grain not just in a broad sense, but also in a day by day and moment by moment sense

just as, PRESUMABLY, you turn your phone notifications off when falling into your work, your art, your soul, you must turn the whole WORLD off, and ALL of its requirements or requests, including even the ones you yourself may have asked for, earlier.

And if you think this is complex; not that easy, not realistic, then, well, I shrug at you. You’ll only ever experience your truth.

The truth i see is that nobody can take anything from you. But you get to choose what you give.

And at the end of the day –

You’re either an artist, who does your damn job, which means also everything required BEFORE and additionally DURING doing said job –

Or you’re just another person

who had a dream and a calling

now being tossed around by life

and acting like a cunt about it, too

which is it?

and, do your choices prove it?

that’s all