Art. Subjective, hard, and easy all at the same time.
Easy because when and if you manage to recognise and respond to your calling, eventually it simply flows. You open a gate, become a vessel. There is magic that’s impossible to explain. Unseen, but incredibly palpable, powerful. You connect to something much greater than yourself. It cannot reach this realm without you. What if each of us has that gate and what if we never manage to get to it. Where does the magic go? Muses need people and people need muses. For art to happen they must coexist.
Everyone who’s ever created something knows it wasn’t just them. They were open and ready, and so they got the gift. But that’s not where it ends. Far from it. It’s only where it begins.
Here on the mortal plane, we have all the practicalities of bringing our art to the world to deal with. You finally have that light, it’s right here in your lap, complete, maybe it’s the best thing you’ve ever done, but now you need to bring it to the world. And, at least for me, that is the hardest part of the process.
It's a long, arduous and often solitary journey. Maybe there are easier ones. I don’t think we choose it though; I think it chooses us. A blessing and a curse. A promise of fulfillment, but at a cost. And I think we know it, deeply and unmistakably, and the knowing comes early, usually in childhood. It certainly did for me.
And after all these years of creating, writing, refining, forgetting, returning, dusting it off, starting over, only to forget again… worn down, eroded by the very process itself. Finally I'm preparing to release this body of work, to push through the boundaries of self-doubt, the fear of rejection, and the paralysing freeze. If it's the last thing I do, it must be done - if only to honour the muses who chose me. So here it goes.