Going to bed last night I had a thought. One of those “slap your palm against your forehead” kind of thoughts that resonate so deeply; that “Aha!” moment; that moment of sudden realization that students of Zen seek so stoically called Satori.
I had it, last night.
I didn’t write it down.
So I’m left here to attempt to reconstruct it. Bah! (The picture above is me frantically trying to reconstruct the thought stream right before writing this post.)
“Bah!” because I also know those Satori moments are moments beyond words, and a great way to know if someone has “got it” is that they are unable to explain what it is they “got”. It’s as if it is an intrinsic knowing-a feeling-not a thought. So to try to distill it down to a thought, a series of words, doesn’t seem to do it justice.
But here I go:
From what I have learned recently, artists view art as a verb. Consumers of art view art as a noun-a thing. To artists-those that make art- art is a verb. It is an action. It is the act of creation. And to be an artist means to be a creator-continually creating. (I didn’t come up with this on my own, mind you. I got it from Art and Fear, a great little book about artists their challenges.)
As such, for an artist to be artistic they need to focus on doing the work. Without the doing, without the act of creating and doing the work, the artist isn’t an artist. In fact, studies have shown that those that are the most prolific at creating art are also the ones that create the best art. Holding out until the right time to create the masterpiece doesn’t really work; creating lots of work births the masterpiece. That is how the process works.
But there is a challenge: the artist’s vision stays one step ahead of the artist’s skill and this can lead to a perpetual dissatisfaction with the work. After all, if you never quite have the skill to fully create what you envision, you won’t ever be truly satisfied. Many fall prey to this challenge and drop out of artistic endeavors. Best to focus on continually creating-Do the work.
It’s funny this thing called an artistic life: we get into it because we want to have done something creative we can be proud of-we imagine being proud of ourselves to have produced good work. It just doesn’t really work like that. We probably won’t be satisfied with it, despite any accolades we might receive from our peers or consumers of our art. So best to focus on the creating.
So then, the photograph doesn’t matter really. It is the act of photographing that matters and will, with enough work, create good photographs. But we’ll be dissatisfied, so best to keep photographing.
Do you see where this is going? Sure, we need to develop a critical eye, edit well, sequence well, expose well, pan well, choose depth of field well, process well, all that jazz. But we have to learn to love the act of creation; we have to love making photographs!!!
There are some that advocate forgetting about the gear and loving the photograph. That the primacy of photography is the photograph. I don’t disagree with them, but I’ve spent many an evening falling asleep wondering why people love their gear so much. And I am beginning to realize that the love of the gear is an integral part of the process. We have to love making photographs and loving the gear is part of that. If I hate my gear I am not going to make pictures, simple as that. But if I love my gear, if I am excited about it, well….that is another story.
So that is my attempt at reconstructing a thought that came to me during that in between space between wakeful reality and dream reality. What are your thoughts?