Art & anxiety
Few things in life are more exciting for an artist or creator than those moments when you feel totally submerse in your creation, and you just can’t stop.
The ideas just keep coming and coming.
The words seem to be falling from your mind directly to the computer without needing fingers to type.
Each element of your drawing just comes naturally and falls out perfectly.
The song seems to be written by itself!
It’s great, isn’t it?
It’s kind of an orgasm. All that tension being relieved.
That’s what art is for, right?
Of course we might want our art to be seen, appreciated — and bought! ,— but first we do it for ourselves. We make art in order to liberate that huge yearning to create, to express feelings and thoughts.
Yet, sometimes, our relationship with art, instead of conveying a way to relieve anxiety, requires us to manage anxiety. In order to be an artist, we must also accept the fact that making art might not always release all the yearning we’ve got.
Because art, we know, is not only about inspiration. It can be, but it’s also about work. And it’s about time, and patience.
As a songwriter, I’ve met so many people who run to me asking for help because they are in need of some inspiration. They feel frustrated — imagine considering yourself a creator, but feeling unable to create.
My case is exactly the opposite. I guess I’m pretty much always on an overdose of inspiration — or, even on those days when I’m not that much inspired, I never run out of things to work on — all I have to do is chose something between the scraps or leftovers from the overdose days.
But either if you are lacking or burning with inspiration, you just have to accept that it might not always be enough for you to turn all this passion into great art.
And you have to be okay with it. Because that’s being an artist too.
Being an artist, sometimes, is not finding the right words. Or finding too many words, and facing the challenge of making this giant universe of mixed feelings fit into a 3-minute song.
It’s learning to be okay with the fact that those beautiful verses may get stuck between your notes for years before they become a song — if they ever do.
It’s accepting that those beautiful pieces of art with the potential to reach so many people’s hearts might not even reach their sight to begin with.
It’s accepting that we may not know to deal with our feelings, or that sometimes we just have to wait for the right time to let them show.
And, by training ourselves to live with this anxiety, we remind ourselves that we are human.
Because, truth is, being able to make art kind of makes us feel connected to something bigger than us — and that’s the most beautiful and amazing feeling, but sometimes it makes us forget that there’s a path between the “source” and the “real world”. This path may not always be walked through inspiration and passion alone.
When we accept this, we automatically feel like going back to work on our art… We work more. We work harder. Because, simply, there’s nothing else we can do.
How can we become better vessels to convey our feelings and thoughts? How can we become better messengers?
We can only keep working, keep trying. Trying to answer those questions is a way itself to work, to try, to just… keep going.
And it makes us better. By working more, and waiting, and maturing, we become better people, and our art becomes better too. We force ourselves to get “better at it”, because we want it so bad to be good enough to the point that it will be impossible to ignore.
By committing to constantly polish our art, we learn that we have to constantly polish ourselves too.
At the end of the day, creating is being okay with the fact that we’re humans, after all. We’re not perfect, but hopefully we’ll become better humans during our journey to become better artists.
