Honestly

Truth is fire, and to tell the truth means to burn and glow.

Gustave Klimt 

Crashing Eno

"In art, you can crash your plane and walk away from it" Brian Eno (https://twitter.com/dark_shark)

Artists and the End of Schadenfreude

Schadenfreude is pleasure derived from the misfortune of others, especially those we see as rivals. We feel it when a rival's book deal or gallery show gets drenched in flop sweat because artmaking is a jungle, right? There just aren't enough rewards to go around for everyone and fail-danger waits under every vine. It doesn't have to be. Why can't the success of others make the jungle floor more fertile for all of us, i.e. if we're willing to do the work? Resentment for other's achievement is an act of self-vandalism. It's leeches the precious energy we need to make our own work.

Nature isn't deathly competition but cooperation for the mutual benefit.

And taken a step farther––and at the risk of sounding like Seth Godin––once we understand we exist in cooperation and not as rivals, then maybe we can see our work as the gift it is and should be:

The question is not what can I get from the world, but what can I share with the world that's emerging.

In harsher academic terms:

If a society... strongly identifies with... achievement, resentments will be seen for what they are––the complaints of undisciplined failures...  

Achievers do not act out of a sense of guilt or obligation; they are driven onward by a sense of abundant, overflowing life. They create not merely because they desire to enjoy the fruits of their labor––which they do––but because of an inner fire urging them onward... Every achiever makes a contribution, large or small, to the continuation and advance of civilization. 

Robert Sheaffer

Your good art will do no less than advance civilization. How about that? So then, what're you waiting for? Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone. (Picasso––easy for him to say, huh?) Don't go to bed until you've written a paragraph or drawn a sketch or made some music, crafted or concepted, etc, for the world needs you.

The opposite of schadenfreude is mitgefühl. Practice more mindful mitgefühl.

Man Up

More than talent, more than ability, more than skill, what a writer needs is courage.

Courage.

Matisse said something similar, "Creativity requires courage."

Finding courage and fighting resistance is now a major industry. There are libraries of books and armies of gurus, therapists, and other self-described experts with portfolios bulging with conferences, 12-step programs, and all other media available to help the artist to face the page, face the fear, break the wall, to push on even when you despise the results or when the muses abandon you, courage to present something you're not sure of, to push into new frontiers, or more importantly, especially when you aren't pushing into new frontiers. Courage not to hide. Courage to tell your stories, to reveal your history, to use the most authentic material at hand though it may be coworkers, friends, and family. Accountants, managers, associates, lawyers, doctors, etc may hide in their work, may claim it is just their job. An artist cannot.

Popular marketer and blogger Seth Godin defines art as 1) made by human being, 2) created to have an impact, to change someone else, and 3) is a gift. You can sell the souvenir, the canvas, the recording... but the idea itself is free, and the generosity is a critical part of making art. Most art has nothing to do with oil paint of marble. Art is what we're doing when we do our best work.

Art is what we're doing when we do our best work.

That's to say art work is artwork, but it's work and that's the creator's job. It's a process of stages, a work in progress: First with the heart, then with the head. But first, get it down. The first draft, the thumbnail, the first take, should always be authored by the heart. (I cribbed a bit from Finding Forrester there.)

Art work does not necessarily produce the artwork, but it is a spiritual exercise.

So now, go exercise.