Looking in the mirror.
Entertainment is art. Hardly the spiciest take I've ever made, but somehow still a topic that has inspired endless cauldrons of debate to froth over and spill into the gutters of discourse. Because "Well, how do we bother define what counts as entertainment" and "If video games are art, then doesn't that mean anything can be art? If I defecate in the middle of Norwich city Centre; is that a public arts display?" To which my unequivocal answer is yes. Public defecation is perhaps the most daring art piece imaginable, some might even go so far as to call it "incarceration worthy" and "patently illegal". But in those last moments that the manacles clang around your wrists and you feel the rough hands of the law shove you in the back seat of a police cab, you can taste those last gulps of free air vindicated in the fact that not even Leonardo Da Vinci had the courage to unabashedly bare his inner soul like you just did. What an absolute hero.
Where was I? Oh right, art! Everyone has an opinion on what constitutes art, but even beyond that you'll find myriads of conflicting opinions and consensuses on what within that exclusive club of accepted art is actually good. Sure, the absolute scale and majesty of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel has taken the breath away of artists for generations since it's completion, but you'll still find the old snob today who looks up that cloudless sky of god touching the hand of man and declares "Cor blimey, that's a bit gaudy; ain't it?" Such is the curse of art, subjectivity and objectivity weave about each other like the twin snakes of Asclepius, always battling and never quite meeting. You'll forever have supporters and detractors for your every move in life. But do you want to know who the harshest critics are? Ourselves.
Yes, just like this is a children's animated movie the greatest trial any artist must overcome is that poisonous black bile that churns inside of their own mind called 'self doubt'. Because 'doubt' is the mind killer or something. I, for one, can attest to being ruled by such fears in my every life, such to the extent that I've regularly tried to run from my art of smother it as much as possible. I never tell anyone that I'm a writer, knowing the expectation it carries, search for any job that would permit me to leave it behind and battle with the quality of my finished work every single day. But here I am, four years later, still sticking at it. Why? Well, because at this point it's the only thing that feels real to me anymore. All the world seems a blur and adrift, and only when I put finger to keyboard and see the magical type blink across a blank canvass can I properly breath easily with myself. To one point of self medication; I've yet to experience a total panic attack since this blog began! (So there's that.)
And I am by no means the harshest of self critics. Even famously throughout the various ages of creation, you'll hear legendary historical figures doomed to forever wallow in their own doubting self-pointed hatred. Vincent Van Gogh is such a famous example of this that Doctor Who had to come along and bring the guy into the future just to see how his work came to mean something. (That darn episode always makes me cry.) The legendary '27 club' is full of musical artists who took their own lives despite the powerful impact each would have on their chosen medium of love. It seems that in baring one's own heart outwardly, the artist is forever locked into the cyclical art of judging their own worth and esteem by the merit of their output. Or rather, how they choose to judge that merit through the warped lens of the mind's eye.
Hate flows so easily out of our own eyes for the things that which we create, probably because it's our own cursed hands we saw in the product of creation. Weaving the most beautiful tapestry together means nothing when our fingers remember the feel of every thread conjoined in the process, because we know that final product for the parts that made it. For me, what grants me the ability to overcome the 'creator's disgust' is the space of time. Divorcing myself from the process of creation and objectively judging the product of my own hand is the only way to truly reach it's merits and failures. Of course, then I discover that I misspelt 'enveloped' in the literal first paragraph, and the paranoia and self doubt just creeps back into my heart.
Love is another aspect of that which we make, for the opposite side of the coin is an inexorable twin of the equation. So much of creation in art is based on literally tearing out facets of ourselves, our emotion and personality, and laying it on display for the world to see. After that it can be difficult, horrific even; to play and plod with that part of you, even for the good of the story. Often times you might hear famously voices in the world of authorship gleefully compare the maiming of story characters with actual infanticide, and whilst I find that comparison mildly concerning for how often it's raised, the effect is not lost on me. It hurts to break what you love, but it hurts even more to do a disservice to what you love by refusing to break it. Either side of the equation, hate or pain, the receptive artist can often be left feeling genuinely pained.
Health among the world of artists is very often a difficult and tricky aspect to track, not least of all because of the 'mental pain' versus 'physical pain' divide present in the world. For a lot of authors, specifically, the struggle of mental anguish can quite often be the fuel that drives our passion, and as gauche as it sounds, sometimes our greatest muses can be the pits of our own deepest depression. I myself can attest to genuinely finding the desire to make notes whilst in the throes of actual agony, which might speak something of my own warped sensibilities more than the general state of author's everywhere but I can say I wasn't like this before I started writing. Dying for one's art is quite probably, in most situations, not really worth it upon analysis.
Bridging out to the absolute juggernauts of team artistry that are movies, TV shows and games- all largely rife with conflicting visions and competing egos, and that environment can become a focusing lens for all the most destructive tendencies of the artist. Of course, not everything about creating art is negative, it can't be. Many use creating art as a form of self-therapy, which is in fact the very reason why I myself got to writing this ludicrously large log of letters I label a blog. The trick comes, I think, in knowing how to balance the good consequences against the bad and tilt yourself in the right direction, which comes with a degree of introspection and self analysis. It's probably worth the effort, as the consequences for not checking in with yourself every now and then have been know to be a bit... grizzly.
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