We are overdue
for an artist’s movement that will change the world. It may sound absurd to you
but it is only because you have been sleepwalking through life of late, we have
all been sleepwalking. It is we the artists who shape perception. We see the
path and leave signs in our art for others to follow. But we have lost sight of
this fact. We have allowed others to tell the stories, to paint the picture. We
have allowed corporations and profiteers to take over. The world of late has
been shaped by corporate artists for corporate interests. Hell, we’ve even
become corporate artists ourselves, allowing ourselves to believe we do what we
must to earn a paycheck.
Even worse, we
have become irrelevant. We have become domesticated, toothless, and fangless.
We have forgotten the power we possess and quietly whisper half-truths and
assertions we ourselves do not understand nor believe. We no longer even dare
call ourselves artists because we fear what the name implies. We fear to take
on such a bold undertaking and so call ourselves songwriters, novelists,
painters, or filmmakers. But we are artists, all of us, all who seek to express
beauty and truth. If we are not artists then we are propagandists. Even if we
do not out and out lie, if we do not profess what we believe, if we do not
reflect what we see, we are in the camp of the enemy by lulling the population
into somnolence when we should be awakening them to their true condition.
It is time once
again for human art that expresses human values. Not money’s values, not
machine values, not corporate values. When humans take back art they take back
control of their path, their direction, their destiny.
It must be done
boldly, not with one eye behind us, fearing that it will not provide a living.
The time has come for choice, the road has diverged and we must choose which
path to take. In truth, the paths diverged long ago, and we have been stumbling
halfheartedly through the tall grass. It is time to find the path those who
have inspired us have laid clear for us.
To crawl on the
way we have been, meekly obeying our baser motives, denying all that is best of
our humanity, or to embrace with both arms the visions we see at our best
moments. Perhaps we have waited so long because we've allowed ourselves the belief
that the other path, the path of doubt and timidity, offered at least a degree
of security. Now we have walked it too far, can no longer deny the destruction
and hopelessness that lies at the end of it.
We must embrace
our childish dreams with adult determination. It is not maturity to do
otherwise, it is a refusal to develop ourselves into the most complete humans
we can become, a refusal to grow into what we are capable of being.
Crawl from your
cribs and your playroom you call your man cave and stretch out into a larger
existence than you have dared imagine. It can be frightening, yes, but it is
worth the risk. The alternative is a life not lived. Put aside fear, and dare.
Art is not a
diversion, it is the summit of human understanding. Literature is not the
construction of a beautiful though frail glittering glass ornament. It is the
creation of a prism through which we are able to see the world we live in in a
way we never have before. It is not the plaything of ivory tower intellectuals nor
an escapist drug for bored housewives, but the raw, pulsing stuff of life, the
essence, the soul.
Art is a prism,
not a microscope or telescope, which has us looking too finely or too far, but
a prism to see what is before us, what is nearest and most relevant.
You the artist
shape how your audience perceives the world. You influence their behavior. It’s
a big responsibility but you cannot avoid it. That is why you must try your
utmost to give what you perceive to be the truth. To do otherwise, to produce
work that is devoid of the deepest parts of you, is to tell others that the
deepest part of you—and them—doesn’t matter. Is that the message you wish to
convey?
Charles Barkley
once said that he was not a role model, but he was wrong. Once you have someone’s
attention, you are a role model whether you like it or not. If you ask to be
listened to, if you go out of your way to seek the attention of others, then
you incur the responsibility that comes with that. You cannot merely entertain,
it doesn’t work that way. You cannot offer only entertainment without message
because that in itself sends a message, that life is a trivial game we play
with no real purpose or moral aspects.
The world is
adrift on a rudderless ship, but you the artist are the rudder, you know it to
be true. You ask for them to see through your eyes, to follow you as you weave
your story. You are the navigator who sees the directions written in the stars.
Do not tell the rest what they wish to hear but tell them what you have seen.
Do not tell them for another instant what they want to hear when you know it’s
not true, no matter how much approval or money you stand to lose.
You are the
artist. It is given to you to see what others do not or will not. It is given
to you to speak of beauty and of truth. That should be enough. Indeed, there is
no other reward that equals it.
