"Artists need to pay attention to what is around them and inside of them."
- Don Postema, Space For God
Paying attention isn't wasted time for anyone, but it almost always feels like it is. I am coming from my perspective as an artist when I say that I feel as though I have something to hide, or at the least try very hard to justify, when people ask me what I did all day. But if I don't keep an inner dialogue, reading, sketching, and listening, my art becomes the most mediocre version of itself. It is labored and forced; people detect counterfeit and do not connect with it. In business terms, my "product" becomes faulty. Although the output of a contemplative life is valued to an extent in our culture, contemplation isn't.
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word...
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
- T.S. Eliot
No comments:
Post a Comment