The Young Artist Is Fragile

The Road For Artists: It Starts Within

The Song From Today's Episode: Kiss My Lips Red With Love

The young artist is fragile in many ways. Making himself available to real creation, he leaves himself vulnerable. Vulnerable to judgment, doubtful, and susceptible to feedback or lack thereof. The young artist’s journey is that of fighting with himself for himself. His character is marked by and built through struggles, hurdles, and pains to overcome. The young artist finds himself in many trials, mostly of the making of his mind. Who is he to be, the artist his heart claims to be? Who is he to lead and stand for something? Who is he to help and nurture with his art and words and taste and courage?

Trials by fire are many for the young artist. His old ways are at odds and in stark contrast with his emerging self. He transforms into an artist by facing each pain (often reluctantly after much suffering). Being an artist does not come easy or free of charge. It is one of the most challenging journeys of all. It is the journey of the soul. From darkness to light, if you will. Hardships are many, and almost in secret, the young artist’s ego fights until it relinquishes its selfish stance, turning an artist into an angel. Long, hard looks in the mirror. Moving in the dark, with only God to lead. Intuitions get sharpened with each failed or successful adventure. It is all the same: the lesson is the point.

Selfish artists create ugly work, full of themselves, wanting money and fame from the art, not creating for others but for themselves. Selfless artists, pure of heart, create work that shines and holds light, like the sun — shining on its own. Not for its own sake but to bring life to the world. Nourishing others but being full all the same. Not of need to give, but their very being is a ray of giving of the highest order. But angels have once all been men. The journey then is from selfish to selfless — from men to angels.

You and I are angles. But angels in the making. We have many hurdles to overcome with ourselves. Like yesterday when you did not share your work or deleted your last article. Or when you wrote a song only to put it in the drawer accompanying all your other songs, collecting dust. The light is dim and barely visible to the young artist, and ignorantly, he still follows it. He knows it’s his only way, his only choice — not a choice, maybe — but his destiny.

The young artist has something in him that wants to bloom, and he obeys. He has no choice in what wants to bloom — he lets it. Often, he resists the work that wants to come through, and he is scared to share it. It is so different, so peculiar, so odd, so strange. He knows not what to do with it. The obvious answer is to share it. That work is clearly not meant for himself alone. Art is only art when shared. That peculiar-strange kind of art always has funny ways to find itself in the right hands at the right time.

So then, I write these lines to conclude that I am a clueless artist, very young at heart with a long journey ahead, but willing and able. And I hope you join me in our shared ignorance.

Art is only art when shared.

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Lila Tace