Art is Hard

American writer Kurt Vonnegut was known to say that a plausible mission of artists is to make people appreciate being alive at least a little bit. He was often asked if he knew of any artists that were able to pull that off.

“The Beatles did,” Vonnegut would say.

From music to motivational speaking to the daily newspaper column, art encompasses any form of expression that conveys meaning – blatant or subtle – to a target audience. It can be concrete. It can be abstract. It can be both – art literally is “whatever you make out of it.”

There are many motivations available to an aspiring artist, such as the pursuit of personal satisfaction, commemorating persons or events, seeking social change, worshiping one’s chosen deity, making a living or even attempting to do something that no one has ever done before.

Art is the soul’s own speech – a different way to communicate ideas and feelings.

However, art is difficult and therefore requires practice and perseverance. Some people may describe great artists as “gifted” or “talented,” but those people overlook all of the time and practice those artists put into perfecting their crafts.

Practice does make perfect – it’s cliched because it’s understood to be true. You have to sink long before you can swim.

The more you practice, the more you learn to convey complex ideas and emotions through whichever art form you choose. Most people don’t want to hear about all of your great common sense solutions to the world’s problems – it’s much easier simply to arm your audience with the questions to all those ugly answers and hope that they draw the conclusions you want them to draw.

But the thing about those ideas of yours – the ones you think you own – is that each time you express one artistically it is affected in some way by the artists that have influenced you. Don’t try to let your influences show – it’s more fun to see how they snuck their way into your art in retrospect.

The question I want you to think about the most today is this: Where does inspiration really come from? I’ve been drawing on my indifference towards politics and other issues occasionally to fill this space for a few months, but there other themes and ideas I try to sneak into my columns. I enjoy reading the work of my peers and seeing what they can do with the same amount of space that I’m given; it makes me wonder who influenced them and what their intentions are.

I draw some of my inspiration from all those writers that came before me. Trying to impersonate people you consider greater than yourself will challenge your ego and abilities.

Self-discovery is also a great starting point for the artist in need of inspiration. Often artists are brutally honest during self-reflection. It’s certainly a good thing to be your biggest critic, because your friends won’t be the ones to point out your flaws. A self-portrait – concrete or abstract – will tell you more about what people see in you than they will.

But the biggest source of inspiration for me is a played out and over-hyped concept that everyone on earth is looking for, yet has reservations about. Do you ever sit back and wonder what it was that The Beatles were singing about that made so many people appreciate being alive?

The most fun four-letter word to make on earth – what else?

Anyway, this will be the last column I write on the topic of writing columns. Art is hard, but it’s the best chance you have to show someone that there can be a different way.