During the fall of my last year of undergrad, I took a performance art studio class. The work I did in that class, and a follow-up studio the next semester, led to my participation in PANTS ON FIRE. It also helped me start to figure out who I was as an artist.
One morning in mid-November (all the way back in 2010), I came to class about half an hour late. (It was an 8am class, and I’m not a morning person.) Half the class was absent, and several others were also late. Mat- our instructor- was at the end of his rope (having endured an entire semester of issues with Time and Attendance, something which I, admittedly, often contributed to) and flew into an indignant rant. It started with a (completely justified) scolding about responsibility and honoring commitments and generally having our shit together.
Then his talk (which lasted most of the 4hr session) veered into more abstract territory. He started talking about life, and work, and what it means to be an artist. He lamented that American art schools don’t adequately prepare us to be the “teflon-armored motherfuckers” we needed to be in order to survive (and thrive) in the art world. That art world, he said, “Is a big VIP party in an exclusive nightclub. And you’re not on the list.”
And then…. and then…. he told us what being an artist meant to him. I’m going to have to paraphrase, but this is the jist of it.
Every moment of our lives, we are, all of us, staring into a lethal Void. We’re born stupid, and scared, and not knowing what the hell to make of all this. And eventually, Death comes for us all. But that’s not the worst thing. The worst thing is that the inevitability of Death, the struggle to find any scrap of meaning in existence, leads us to Despair. We are overcome with fear and doubt, and the drive to avoid Death leads us to a sort of Death-In-Life. We can’t fight Death. But we can fight Despair. We can find and make those things that remind us of Truth, and Beauty. If we can hold on to that, we can refute Despair, and avoid Death-In-Life. That’s what Art does. It reminds us of what is True, of what is Beautiful, and draws our gaze away from the Void.
I’ve had a bit of an artistic crisis over the past few months. As a result of events in the world at large (the socioeconomic collapse of Europe, the #Occupy movement and the resulting Fascist backlash by the federal government, ominous signs of climate change) as well as some things going on in my personal life (which I won’t go into here), I started to doubt my decision to commit myself to making Art. I started to wonder whether my practice was not only not helping make the world better, but possibly even making things worse. I felt that I either had to find a new career path, one that actively tried to advance the causes of life and liberty in a practical and actionable way, to offer myself as a disciple to someone like Vinay Gupta and prepare myself to meet the Oncoming Storm… or else flee to the wilderness and hope that global civilizational collapse passes me by. I was also dealing with a spat of Artist’s Block that felt deeper and lasted longer than at any point since the really dark days of my early 20s. I wondered whether I really had anything to say with my work, or if I was just putting on airs.
Earlier tonight, I remembered that morning over a year ago, and realized that I had been staring into the Void too long. Starting now, I’m going to remind myself, every day, of things that are True and things that are Beautiful. To keep my work going, yes, but also to refute Despair.
In that performance studio, I left every day emotionally exhausted. I knew then what it meant to give everything you are, and everything you have, over to your work. I learned that if I’m making art, and I don’t feel raw and exposed and exhausted after a day in my studio, then I’m just not doing it right. That class- Mat, my classmates, our (sometimes unwitting) audiences- taught me not only what being an artist really meant, but also how to live in a world with no guarantees.
You can’t fight Death. But you can fight Despair.
