The security in the purposelessness of art.
No, do not rush to the next line. Why do you always have to rush? Why don’t you just try to sit back, think and savour each noun in the sentence above? Since when did reading mean finishing, my love?
Security.
Purposelessness.
Art.
Can you associate with every word individually? Have you ever felt insecure? Or purposeless? Have you ever created art that “failed”? Why do you think it failed? Because you sold a piece of painting at a loss? Because your collection of poems was rejected by every publishing house? Because you made a paper boat and it did not sail? Why do you say you failed?
Did you create art for the purpose of money or fame? Ask yourself, then. Did you really create art in the first place?
Jobs must serve a purpose of earning you your daily bread. Machines must serve their individual purposes of serving men. Medicine must save lives, guns must kill to protect, technology must make the world an easier, hopefully better place.
But art does not need a purpose. Art is like an eleven month old baby scribbling on white paper with crayons in blue yellow and red. Art is like the owner of a cocker spaniel with countless love in his calculative mind for a speechless canine. Art is like a tired waitress in bed at night, not asleep, not awake, but at rest.
Look for meaning in your guitar strings and the soul of your music will lie dead. Try to explain an abstract painting to a skeptical spectator and the colour on the canvas will fade. Force a structure into your rhyme, and you will cease to be a poet.
If you have created art, be secure in the needlessness of a purpose in it. Feel like a mother cradling her new born – ugly or pretty, blind or deaf – the most beautiful baby nonetheless. Bask in the realisation that you do not need approval, or stamps or medals to recreate yourself. You do not need validation for your own existence.
Your art is you. Feel secure, friend.
Artfully
The girl who travels in bows
She travels in bows 