Your art or your life

In the past I’ve been insecure about my work. A nice way to say it would be that I had high standards, I didn’t want to be a party to schlock. I’ve seen some exhibits and shows and felt embarrassed for the artists, thinking, “That really is awful and don’t they know it? Glad it’s not me making an ass of myself.”

I am highly perceptive and expressive. I could live this by acknowledging that fear (and shame) has kept me back.  It takes time to be able to achieve high standards so in the meantime, what? Do I hide in a cave and show nothing until I’ve become ‘a master’? I’ve stifled my growth by being so flinty and judgmental about my own expression. The tag for Holy Boners is the Creative Power of Audacious Mistakes. That’s a hard earned lesson. I’ve been afraid of making mistakes and missed out on a lot of fun. Courageous blunders get us where we need to go. It’s the juice.

I can strive to be fully alive. That’s what this art thing is all about, the art of life. Art isn’t an end, it’s a being and a practice. Paintings and plays are stigmata and signatures of an experience outside of time and place, a metabolism, maybe even spiritual spore. It’s shit! The artist can’t help it, they’ve got to toss it off or die. It’s natural and obvious. A masterful shit is enlivening in a cosmic context we might not understand, probably because we flush our own shit down the toilet and try not to think about it. Shit matters tho, take it from a guy with a composting toilet. The lessons I’ve learned…

So the point here is, perfecting the product is backwards and stifling. Waking up / deepening perception is the only worthy objective. Everything else follows.