The Greatest Risk Is Not Taking One

An argument could be made that Picasso was the swaggeringest, sword swinging art pirate in history. I'd make it. The little man painted his own alternate reality with himself as its solar center. As an artist his fearlessness seemed to operate as if there were not a self-doubt cell in his brain. Everywhere he struck his creative pick axe he discovered gold nuggets. And because of this, at any step of his career he could've stopped and simply stood in the glory and made a fortune doing endless variations from his pedestal. You could easily imagine assembly line Blue Period by Picasso™, or Surrealist Period™, or Cubist Period™, or a hundred other styles he invented that didn't have -ist names. He was possessed to paint by some devil inside and didn't stop until he died at the age of 91. In fact, some of the later years of his life were some of his most prolific (at least in terms of quantity). He painted exactly what he wanted and he made the world come with him. In other words, as an artist he was not only utterly risk averse, he was risk addicted. 

We are not like Picasso. If you're like me, sometimes when you do something well you're afraid to take the next step because you're sure it won't meet your expectation. Of you're too discouraged to take the next step because you're terrorized of failure, so instead of failing by admission you choose to fail by omission, by not working at all.



So I've devised the Artist's Prayer: Choose a god, be it within or without, and promise to Him/Her to: I promise to take a small risk everyday. Draw the thing you don't want to draw. Play the solo you feel like you have no business playing. Write the scene/the character's voice you fear most. Etc, etc, etc. Whatever the feelings associated with it, accept them, feel them churning in your stomach or shrinking in your chest or drying your mouth or wherever and however you internalize it and understand it is not a bad feeling so much as an alive one. It is the cost of doing business. Feeling and sit in the feeling. Imagine that Picasso probably got turned on by such a feeling. Let the feelings rain down on you as you walk without an umbrella. Be the winner of you're own version of the wet t-shirt contest. 

Burn, baby, burn. And be proud that you did it all. Then, do it again tomorrow. We'll do it together. Hey, I love Picasso, but f**k him. In our own little universes, he's got nothing on us.