Tuesday, March 10, 2015

Romanticizing Artists

Hey sorry for the delay, I'm on a midterm struggle bus right now and the ride has been bumpier than expected. :(

I tend to romanticize artists, writers in particular. Maybe because writing is always hard for me, in more than a short chunk (aka blog post). It feels like I’m setting something in stone. I’ll have an idea that has such potential and then write it and it feels wrong and I can’t fix it so I give up. I imagine someone doing this for a living to be some mysterious, troubled soul who can handle that. And when I see strangers with a notebook, I think they might be that elusive writer.

Real writers are definitely nothing like that though, they’re probably like everyone else. Maybe a little introverted and bookwormish, but not a tortured soul searching for truth in the midst of all this absurdity.

Of course this also applies to musicians and artists, but I feel like I notice lonely writers more often. They’re also more likely to be in a quiet place writing or something and looking emotional.

It’s strange the assumptions that you make about people, it can be based on the weirdest, most random aspects. I’m pretty sure that this idea came from Sylvia Plath or Hemingway or someone like that. And while they created great art, they had pretty sad lives. Not exactly something you want to wish on other people.

That’s the catch, isn’t it, you can create all this emotional art, but you have to go through pain for it. Which is really the hand off in life in general, you can go through it feeling fine and not doing much, or you could take all the ups and downs of emotions. It’s a risk that you have to take if you want to feel.

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