I am getting good feedback from this blog.
It is a really good exercise for me - it keeps me disciplined, focused and ads a sense of order to my seemingly disorganized life. I also like the fact that somewhere, on some remote server, this information is being stored, and somewhere, on someone's hard drive lies a link to this site. It brings the web of the world wide internet seem a little more tightly woven and a little less anonymous.
There is a French saying : 'Jamais deux sans trois'.
Oddly enough, there is a similar English saying - "bad things happen in threes'.
Leave it to those stuffy old Anglo Saxons to put a negative spin on things!
Well - yesterday was my day of threes:
My old pal/sis had read my blog and loved it!! (Thanks L!!!) She said:
I carried myself up the stairs, anxious to hit the pillow, I must tell you....I WAS SUDDENLY OVERCOME WITH A BREATHTAKING FEELING...."YOU'RE GONNA BE FAMOUS SIS!"
Wow! That was a sight for sore and bloodshot eyes!
Not that I truly believe in these things, and not that I want to jinx myself (knocking on wood as I type this...) but I was told on more than one occasion by seers and other esoteric folk that I would become successful later on in life - after my 30's. That is nice to know as I push 31... I wish!
Later on in the day I got a message from my sexy Nordic friend A. She had received some pix that I took of myself recently and was incredibly impressed.
"Girl - your stuff is fucken amazing! You gotta get it out there!... You're gonna make it!"
There is nothing that makes a bipolar artiste happier than to hear words like that strung into a sentence. And when it is truly sincere, my serotonin levels rise to a nice level.
Even later on in the same day - bringing our story to the evening, I was on the net chatting with another friend and making plans to meet up for lunch:
"I am really broke, so the only thing I can afford for lunch is a coffee and one munchkin at Tim Horton's"
"Ah you artists!!"
I had made a conscious decision when I decided to make the fine arts my field of exploration and study that I knew there would have to be many sacrifices made - one of them being money. There are so few artistes who are successful enough to make a comfortable living doing what they love to do. Many of us struggle from week to week, trying to keep the dream of being able to change the world through our 'oeuvres' alive; but so many of us become discouraged and exhausted pursuing what seems to be the impossible dream and give up, shelve our creative souls and fall into the anonymity of a 9 to 5 world.
'I know, its a cruel world...'
"but you are going to make it before all of us."
"What do you mean?"
"Your stuff is great --. It's just a matter of time before something happens and you make it big."
Wow.
It is also great for an artist's self esteem to hear that other people value their work. I think it is just a genetic default in evolution that artists will be the first ones to beat themselves up, devalue their creative efforts and self-sabotage any chance at success. Maybe it is not a genetic defect after all. Imagine a world full of artists? Starbucks would have been the new McDonalds, coffee and cigarettes would have been considered as parts of the seven essential food groups, crayons would become our currency, and the average work day would be '9 to whenever you feel like doing something else time'. The world had to be balanced by having some scientific and practical people as well. So this so called 'defect' might be an element in the process of natural selection - survival of the fittest. How many artists do you know that do not struggle to survive???!!!
AS the French would say:
"c'est la vie!".
On the subject of suffering and survival, this beautiful quote, and its relevance to my life, what has happened to me in the past makes it even more inspirational.
In a time of darkness the eye begins to see.
Theodore Roethke
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