It is pretty stupid to practice an instrument for hours and hours, year after year or rewriting words again and again that just don’t feel right or endlessly rearranging/rewriting/reshaping older material and musical parts and combining them with an ever-expanding palette of new melodies, harmonies, ideas, skills and sounds, not to mention recording, mixing, performing and all the endless tinkering and edge-of-sanity-stilt-walking that goes with all of that meanwhile trying to remain honest, clear and focused about what I want to express and how I want to do that—often at the expense of intimate relationships, friendships, bank balances, career opportunities, emotional stability, physical health and overall life enjoyment.
Yes this is all quite stupid but overcoming this stupidity demands a certain kind of controlled madness and abnormal self-discipline that really separates the triers and wannabes/could’ve-beens/should’ve-beens/would’ve-beens and other pseudo-artist/pseudo-bohemian/pseudo-rebel excuse machines from those who are pursuing mastery and will not let anything get in their way.
(note: by mastery I don’t necessarily mean becoming a virtuoso musician, performer or craftsman in a specific medium—be it art, sport, science, or otherwise—but a master in expressing one’s own work; with whatever abilities or tools such work demands to be developed and harvested; by whatever means necessary; for however long it takes.)
Throughout the years I have learned to embrace and befriend this madness so that it doesn’t feel like I am always living with a knife at my throat. That said, I am no longer fooled by the calm that I am currently experiencing (and nourishing!) and know that it will last only for so long before all hell breaks loose—and is let loose! Nor am I fooled by the possible foolishness of declaring such bravado, romanticism and over-confidence over one’s pursuits!
There is a saying that is often used to help people overcome obstacles that warns one of repeating past mistakes: “insanity means repeating something over and over again while expecting different results”. In some cases this might be true but as far as talent and creating art goes, this insanity is the price to be paid.
Doing the same thing over and over again is precisely what true talent development is all about, much more than having a “gift” or being a “natural” at something. The real gift is having the passion and perseverance to just keep on doing it no matter what happens or what anybody else says, including ourselves. To go beyond what is sensible, to discover a place where wisdom is an alien; to become a idealistic fool. (Caution: if you want to be “normal” and live a normal life, this kind of path is probably not for you.)
Mastery demands a determination and ambition that is stupid and mad. The process itself will probably never be understood by those who are not in the process themselves and probably not even fully by the victims of such elusive pursuits. However—as history has shown—the fruits of such madness have the potential to eventually be enjoyed infinitely if the madman persists (and doesn’t lose the ball completely!).
Personally, I have attempted to quit my artistic endeavours many times (even successfully for very short periods of time) but the warm seductive glow of this mysterious madness always reels me back in knowing that the serenitious beauty that is experienced when the ship sails smoothly is a beauty like no other. Also, because I don’t really know any other way. There is no plan b.
The price is high, the path is sometimes dark and painful but I tell myself that it will be worth it in the end which is also quite crazy now that I think about it as there are no guarantees and in fact so far I have had little success and have often hoped for much more. Yet here I am after all these years still hacking it out in the battlefields of creation and inspiration knowing that my time will come. Sometime, someday, somewhere, somehow. I just know.
This is the artist’s life and a unique life it is because unlike most other pursuits in life, this one is not chosen; it chooses.