Creativity and Talent

Songs are all written as part of a symphony.

— BOB DYLAN

You are a creative or performing artist. You love to sing, dance, make images. You cherish the written word. Acting thrills you. Your pulse races when you drum. Your darkroom is a magical laboratory. But will you be able to spend the rest of your life pursuing your passion in the face of the many significant challenges that confront you? Can you carve out a career in art, achieve the level of success you dream of, secure some measure of comfort, and find time both for art-making and for living? Can you survive the artist's life?

We are talking about nothing less than survival here, for few creative and performing artists in contemporary Western society can even earn a living from their art. Disturbing figures about visual artists, poets, short story writers, playwrights, novelists, independent filmmakers, pop singers, potters, jazz musicians, rock musicians, classical composers, art photographers — for all groups of creative and performing artists — could be quoted. According to a Rockefeller Panel report commissioned to take an in-depth look at the financial realities of the performer's life,

the miserable income of the majority of performing artists reflects both a shortage of jobs and the brief duration of employment that is available. In all except the small handful of our major and metropolitan orchestras, musicians earn an average of only a few hundred dollars a year from their professional labors. During an average week in the winter season, only about one-fifth of the active members of Actors' Equity Association, the theatrical performers union, are employed in the profession. Of the actors who do find jobs, well over half are employed for only ten weeks — less than one-fifth of the year. For most opera companies the season lasts only a few weeks. The livelihood of the dancer is perhaps the most meager of all.

This is not a pretty picture. Why would a smart, ambitious, talented person choose such a life? Why have you chosen to struggle with cattle-call auditions, rejected fiction, indifferent gallery owners, a lack of recognition, and the other challenges that artists face?

The answers are severalfold. First, your need to express yourself and to manifest your creativity springs from very deep sources. Like a devout believer, you are profoundly moved by art. Your connection to art is reverent, intellectually alive, viscerally deep. You experience rasa, the Sanskrit word for the mood or sentiment evoked by a work of art. In you, what Alfred North Whitehead called the "impulse to originate" is stirred. You want to present to the world what the Navajo call hozh'g: the beauty of life, as seen and created by a person.

You value art and are hopeful about the contributions you can make in art. These needs and values translate into a sense of mission, even something like a religious fervor. You consider the task sacred and the calling noble, and you are willing to make sacrifices and even martyr yourself for art. Emily Carr, the Canadian painter, explained: "Once I heard it stated and now I believe it to be true that there is no true art without religion. The artist himself may not think he is religious but if he is sincere his sincerity in itself is religion."

British poet Stephen Spender wrote: "It is evident that a faith in their vocation, mystical in intensity, sustains poets. From my experience I can clarify the nature of this faith. When I was nine we went to the Lake District, and there my parents read me some of the poems of Wordsworth. My sense of the sacredness of the task of poetry began then, and I have always felt that the poet's was a sacred vocation, like a saint's."

You feel that you have a special, vital role to play in society. From a considered vantage point outside society, you observe, witness, and judge. As the German Expressionist painter Georg Baselitz put it, "The artist is not responsible to anyone. His social role is asocial."

You also feel the simple joy of applying paint to canvas, of making music, of playing a part with other actors. You discover that you are good at it — good with words, good on your feet, good with your voice or your fingers, good at images. Art makes you feel alive. You find that the process of art-making — be it the quietly absorbed practicing, the rollicking rehearsing, the intense poetry writing, or the tempestuous encounter with a blank canvas — buffers you against the ordinariness of the world. "Painting is a way of forgetting oneself," said visual artist Joan Mitchell. Sculptor Louise Nevelson confided, "In my studio I'm as happy as a cow in her stall."

You may also choose the artist's life because you are using art as a tool to help heal childhood wounds or as a means of expressing the pain in your life. Painter Barbara Smith said, "The intent of my work is to break out of a dark place." Nancy Spero, also a painter, offered the following self-description: "I am the angry person sticking out her tongue." The painter Harmony Hammond explained, "I want my work to demand your attention because I can get it no other way."

You may also perceive a career in art as a way to gain recognition, to stand out, to become known as a special and talented person. No doubt you feel you have valuable, innovative, beautiful work to do. Quite possibly you're hoping for fame and fortune. You may harbor the hope that people will one day applaud your achievements and call you great.

Last, you pursue the artist's life because you believe you could be the exception who proves the rule when it comes to money and success. Perhaps like the French painter Chaim Soutine, you'll be discovered by a passing dentist, or like Jean Harlow you'll be discovered sipping soda in a drugstore. You see your novel making a mark and being hailed as a work of genius. You imagine yourself becoming a star and going from rags to riches overnight. The possibility that success may strike quickly and out of the blue sustains you.

You begin your journey as an artist out of sacred motives, with dreams and high hopes, and also, perhaps, you embark from a place of...