ADVICE FOR ARTISTS

The following is an appropriated work, true poetry, an email from Miklos Legrady, the well known artist from Toronto Canada, a very inspiring man.  This is ADVICE FOR ARTISTS.  It is not my "poem", but it's poetic. I label it happiness.  There is a marvelous video to follow.  The copyright belongs to Mr. Legrady, I have reproduced the email with his permission.  I consider it advice for any writer, painter, sculptor or multimedia artists including musicians.

Hi Peter,

I understood your email as a question of what methods actually work.  What is best practice?  Success and failure come cyclically, sometimes one then the other, therefore they're not a judgment on your efforts.  I've had years without recognition but through that time I followed an intuition that "work will see you through".  Among the many memes floating around the best one I learned from experience is to spend a lot of time working, producing.  Else racing in that field.. .  Even in art there's areas that will excite you while others put you to sleep, and obviously you cannot achieve excellence unless the subject resonates for you.  

I've not been a social person for years, which I interpret as a time to be alone and work.  I know there's sparse recognition and little commercial success outside a social network, but I accepted my solitude as doing the right thing at the right time.  Imagine we're bees, flying in the sunshine looking for flowers.  Bees did not make that up, did not choose; they're impelled by instincts which manifest themselves as the desire to do this or that. A bee might feel wonder at a beautiful day and fly out for the fun of it, then be surprised by the colours of a flower which it lands on, only to find sweet nectar, while pollen sticks to that bee and will pollinate the next flower. Highly complex natural processes. 

Humans are different only in a complexity that allows a limited degree of choice, though we live with an illusion of freedom.  Plato's metaphor of the cave talks of men chained so they're facing the cave wall, and their shadow on that wall is the extent of what they know of colours and of life, and if they were to slip their chains and walk outside into the blue sky, yellow sun and green grass what a surprise it would be... A metaphor of our limited capacity compared to what's out there, yet that limitation serves a purpose in giving us what's specific and unique to humanity.  And of course over millennia knowledge and complexity increase.  So we're not that far from the bees and we also have feelings and emotions that draw us to our purpose. 

Out of all this I got the idea that my intuitions and feelings come from within as communication from my instincts, from the creative unconscious, mother nature.  Bees on their return to the hive do a complicate dance that tells others where that patch of flowers lies, indicating the sun-orientation as it changes hourly, and the caloric value of that patch.  Their dance is an art form.  Likely human art serves a similar purpose in indicating out best future.  Though to me much recent art seems to point at what we should avoid; the boring repetitious cleverness...

Ya, so it comes down to two things in our narrative; following your instincts and never giving up, always putting in 110%.  Eventually comes success.  Tennessee Williams in the preface to The Glass Menagerie writes that success, not failure, is the wolf at the door.  Success dulls your focus and relaxes your vigilance.  Eventually you learn that's another pitfall;  when you have reason to celebrate do not take it too seriously, seeing as it can be like quicksand. Best to keep calm and keep on working.  There's also competition and opposition, and times when no one believes in you, and so tenacity, endurance, fortitude in times of troubles.

Of course there's getting along with people; obviously no one wants an unpleasant or difficult person.  Since I'm not that social and have little patience for fools, I compensate by aiming for a level of intellectual clarity through reading and writing, and a level of creative achievement through constantly working. Not that I claim to succeed but I make the effort. The mind like a muscle and whichever part we exercise gets stronger and more complex.

Regrets...  Like a giant redwood is contained within the seed so our self expresses itself as we grow up. I'm rather an optimist and look for the silver lining of disaster, seeing them as an indicator of what direction comes next; for example if an ambition is frustrated it obviously forces you onto another road, until you find a road that feels right.  This outlook keeps depression at a distance.  Also, we cannot evade horror and disaster; these come as our share as much as joy and happiness.  In the arts major trauma and joy empower the artwork, so the silver lining again.

Pitfalls to avoid include the realization that you are better than others; when this knowledge hits you then you know your ego has gone out of bounds.  You might still feel that way but you should at least know you are temporarily insane.  Reason is that others will sense that mood and so it is but an insult to them...  What we call an inflation of the ego, which comes to us all.  

These are the thoughts that come to mind as the most important among life's multitude of choices.

cheers,