The Artist’s Struggle

Whenever I hit a wall, I reflect on all the great artists who have struggled and sacrificed…

Picasso hunched over the canvas for weeks painting, and the face still comes out all messed up.

Claude Monet spending months trying to find a mountain that’s not too hard to paint.

DaVinci desperately trying to get Mona Lisa to stop smiling while he’s trying to paint her portrait.

The tortured DaVinci, tragically more famous for chopping off his own ear than for how good he was at drinking.

The great poets — Whitman, Frost, Yeats — toiling all night over the newest poem, trying to get it just boring enough.

The immortal bard Shakespeare working himself to the bone, spending hours and hours trying to find a good play idea to steal.

Edgar Allen Poe staring down the void, plunging the nightmarish depth of the human mind, all just to impress his beautiful underaged cousin.

Hemingway going from war hero to big game hunter to Pulitzer winner. But all the Pulitzers in the world won’t quench the thirst for BLOOD.

Or the great musicians. From the astounding Beethoven pretending to be deaf for attention, to the transgressive GG Allin accidentally shitting on stage and then having to pretend he did it on purpose.

The bluesmen and the rappers, making sure white people have something to listen to in 15 years.

The enigmatic Banksy, anonymously speaking truth to power from behind the shadows — the ultimate coward.

To all these noble warriors, salute.