To Live as an Artist is to Die Too Soon

Is it coincidence, the number of artist's lives which come to such abrupt ends, and so many by their own hands? Writers, chefs, musicians. Are we more tortured somehow than those who choose to pursue other passions? Perhaps we die too soon because we live so fully within our minds, always creating what is new, but fail to live enough within our bodies while we have the chance.

I am aware of people living the human experience all around me. I just can't relate to the way in which they do it. I am aware that comparatively, my way is "incorrect." That somehow, I'm not doing it "right." But I can't change the way my blood flows. My living comes when I am able to successfully extract the words from my mind and fix them onto the page for the living to read.

Painters and tattooists see canvases all around. Where others may see a wall, a piece of glass, or human flesh, they see something else entirely waiting to be born. They conceive it, fertilize it and bring it into the world, and not for themselves, because they had seen it all along. They create it for those who can see only the blank wall.

Forms are broken free from messy wet clay by sculptors who convince them to appear in order to prove to the less imaginative that they had always been there. The living cannot do this, because they're too busy being busy to allow their minds to breathe and create magic. But the artists, the creators, the dreamers, we cannot truly live, because our minds are too full to allow the obvious, that which is present right in front of us, in for too long.

We enjoy mystery far too much to understand the appeal of the apparent.

Would you find more joy in seeing what exists in front of you naturally, and appreciating that thing, or in describing it in vivid detail to someone without sight? It's in uncovering the new, in experiencing something for the first time that those who are like me feel alive at all. Our stories, our etchings, our songs, are not read, seen or heard by anyone until we breathe life into them and place them in front of living people. And in doing so, a little of our lives is pulled from us, each time. Because to feel alive again, we must start from nothing once more.

I live for the unknown and cannot find a way to breathe fully with only the known playing over and over on a loop in my mind. The thought of it makes my lungs open less and less.

Life is entirely a series of gives and takes, though. What breathes in oxygen, exhales carbon dioxide and what needs carbon dioxide to survive, gives life to the oxygen breathers. Thus, if what the artist provides to the living is necessary, so, too, is what the living gives back to the artist. And what is that thing? Money? Fame?

Validation.

We die when our bleeding pours out faster than it can be pumped back in by the ones we bled for. That must be the moment Hemingway pulled back the hammer and when Basquiat's veins refused to endure any more inspiration. What was flowing from their minds was too great and too fast for adequate replenishment. No accolade enough, no prize sufficient, no friendship or love symbiotic enough to put back in what had been taken.

Yet, if no one took from them at all, if no one ever hears our music or studies our works, have we ever lived at all? If there is no witness to our birth and no one sees us as we wither and if our deaths happen without an audience, were we ever truly alive? Perhaps only if we've left something behind to be noticed later even by one soul.

Is this a life worth living? I don't know yet. I'm too busy bleeding the words from my mind and writing them down for you to consider.