live artfully
we usually think about art as if it is a pursuit (what artists do) or a qualifier you apply to some object (a drawing or a song or a poem). these are pretty different meanings! i think there’s a hint of something important in there. this:
art is a way of life.
art is a way of life, equal parts craft, expression, and experience.
most importantly, art (the way of life) is available to everyone.
okay, maybe not everyone everyone, but just about everyone — if we want “accuracy” we could say to everyone who has the 2 bottom rungs of Maslow’s Hierarchy satisfied. and what’s more, the artistic life is a good way to satisfy the needs further up.
from here on out, when i say art, i mean art as a way of life.
i’m going to try to describe what art (as a way of life, last reminder) looks like, but mind you, i’ve only noticed and embraced art for about five years. i am a total noob. i still use training wheels!
not only that, but a lot of people live artistically seemingly effortlessly (you never know….), intuitively, without making too much of it. mimicking them, provided you can spot them, is probably the best way to learn about it. spotting them is not so hard once you are looking for it, but first…
stupid notions
we tend to think of artists as people who make creative expression a source of income, or fame. fame & fortune have more to do with effective (self-)promotion, marketing, and money. one doesn’t need any of that to live artfully.
again, it is a life philosophy or a personal ethic. something analogous to, say, stoicism. of course, someone might write about their stoicism, make money, and become famous with it, all while remaining a stoic, but that doesn’t confuse us into thinking that only people who do that are stoic.
and my example wasn’t that random. art is quite compatible with stoicism, and further it enhances a stoic life.
anyway…
i observe these cultural distinctions that really confuse matters: left vs right brained, creative-type vs not, (professional) artist vs not, art vs science, real work vs hobby, analytical vs creative,… that flavor. there’s too many to list.
they are all stupid.
okey fine, some are instrumentally useful to some other things (like acquiring money), but i think it’s better to be explicit & direct about those other things without making silly distinctions.
equal parts
the first step is learning to express.
the first step is learning to craft.
the first step is learning to experience.
you can randomize the order, it doesn’t matter where you start. one way, the other, or the third, it’ll be equal parts expression, craft, and experience.
i really mean equal parts. it’s easy to see how craft is long-term and deliberate, but expression and experience are the same way, just less obviously so.
and i gotta proceed in some order, so i picked it at random.
craft
craft is the part of art that is concerned with getting good at making.
imagine that you are Van Gogh and have that depth of emotion, and troubled experience, and the whole everything else, but you don’t know how to paint, so instead you just angrily rub crayons on sketchbooks without rhyme or meter. that’s what happens, at the extreme, in the absence of craft.
absence of craft isn’t the end, per se. someone might’ve picked up and understood Van Gogh’s crayon splotches. but you do see how that is a lot less likely than what actually happened, yeah? and ugh! Van Gogh came close to never being discovered even though he cultivated an insane level of craftsmanship.
so, to live artfully you must cultivate at least one craft. this craft is usually your main medium of expression, but you might need to cultivate more than one in service of the main one. or you might be a multimedia artist. which craft is ‘main’ might change or not be clear and so on.
i think everyone understands this part about art — musicians practice, painters sketch, dancers err dance, etc.
experience
one time i was walking in Washington Square park with some friends without a care in the world. so, we stopped to watch an act by a guy who was juggling on a unicycle. we stayed for a whole iteration of his act and i even became an ‘audience volunteer’. since this was a fairly street-iterated performance, the uni-juggler also had jokes. he actually had lots of jokes. it might be most accurate to describe the act as a comedian juggling on a unicycle, but that wasn’t clear at first. and i would’ve been sufficiently impressed just by his juggling — he was pretty good! which isn’t that rare in NYC. in fact, encountering very talented people busking is so common place in NYC that people tend to ignore it. :(
when we were walking back i had the following exchange with one of my friends:
rz: heh, that was surprisingly good, entertaining, even if the humor was a little ehh…”dated”
Thal: pft, it was stupid. he was mostly jokes
rz: WHAT?! THAT GUY WAS JUGGLING, UNICYCLING, AND DOING STANDUP COMEDY. AT THE SAME TIME. THOSE ARE THREE THINGS YOU CAN’T DO!!!1!!11!
Thal: bahumbug
yeah, i often get excited and talk in all caps. and sometimes i’m mean to Thal. but it is okay, we go way back and understand each other fairly well.
art requires that you go about the world with your senses maximally open. nobody can do this perfectly all of the time, but art demands that you try.
not only that, but as you progress with any one craft, the craft itself will demand that you open your senses.
for example, to paint well you have to be able to see very well. you have to be able to see with your eyes way better than most people. you gotta notice a lot.
it is the same with music. if you want to play well, you really have to be able to listen well. you gotta notice a lot.
and beyond its relationship with craft, one part of becoming inspired is experiencing and noticing. noticing & understanding are at the end of the line of experiencing.
one good way to open your senses is to be in the habit of wondering what would it take you to make or express whatever you are experiencing.
i don’t think i can do a better job than Sasha Chapin on giving you practical tips on experiencing better. but i do have one to add: i like to think that i hang out with art, not that i consume it. just like you can vibe with your friends in different ways, you can vibe with art. for me, this makes it effortless to open the window that are my senses.
senses are the window, so to speak. a lot of what you might notice or experience will be inside the house, in your mind; and a lot of it will be outside the house, in the world. getting good at experiencing is getting good at both of those.
this is why it drives me nuts when people consume a piece of art and then declare whether they like it or not. the artistic object is like a finger pointing at something, which might be inside the house and/or in the world.
for one, the judgment is most often about the finger, and not about the thing it points to. but also, once you’ve judged it is really hard to keep experiencing. the longer you stay in the frame of trying to understand a piece of art, the more you’ll get from it.
the frame of evaluating what would it take for you to be able to produce it will help keep you curious.
staying curious is particularly important when you think you don’t like something. the more you let curiosity triumph over judgment, the more you’ll get out of the experience.
this is not to say that you shouldn’t have taste. you should definitely develop taste, which is a kind judgment. it’s a special case, though: taste is what you get when you are good at deferring judgment as much as possible. your taste will improve when you suspend judgment, learn to defer it, and learn to re-consider past judgments.
stay curious.
and this doesn’t apply just to pieces of art. it basically applies to everything you experience. you see why i say that art is a way of life?
express
with my metaphors firmly in place, this part is now easy to write. expression is going in the opposite direction: take stuff from the house, and put it in the world. become the finger.
as you art, you won’t always be able to express. this is a sad aspect of the whole thing, but it is what it is. emotions and psychology are very tricky. particularly for those who are good at experiencing. the tortured artist is even a long-standing cultural trope.
the only thing i have to offer about that is to be kind to yourself when it happens. and happen it will. :(
one fortunate thing is that expression doesn’t necessarily need to be highly public or highly permanent. it can be both ephemeral and private. putting something in your sketchbook is more expressive than letting it reside in your mind. telling it to a friend is more expressive than keeping it in your private journal. so on.
the most fortunate thing is that once you see art this way, as a way of life, everything you do can counts, big and small. not everything is equally crafty or as expressive or experience-y, but just about everything is some of each. setting the table for dinner? you bet you can be artful about that.
it is not only about what you produce (the table setting) but also about how you carry yourself while you do it. it’s magnetic when people do mundane things artfully. this is even a cultural trope, though i don’t know if it has a name.
personal fashion (ie how you dress) is a particularly valuable canvas to practice expressing. for one, it offers multiple layers and dimensions — venture past the basics and you’ll see the world differently and unlock lots of beauty (worth it even if you’ll feel perpetually underdressed in Soho and Milan). fashion is particularly valuable because of its immediate social impact. the world responds directly and quickly to how you dress.
and on the other end of the spectrum, the big stuff, the stuff that will take up significant chunks of your life, that can certainly be art regardless of what it is. career? for sure. your side project? definitely. your family? yes.
live artfully!
art!