Hobby is a Myth

What happens to the artist when he doesn’t get to create his art? When he represses his creativity? For the artist, his art is his voice. It is means of self-expression, the one most natural and most unique to him. I often think about the frustration that the artist who’s – for any number of reasons – is unable to use his voice. He’s mute. Although he may have convinced himself and others that he doesn’t really have the ability, the artistic ability, in his heart of hearts he knows he does, or, at least has some curiosity to discover whether he does.

I think there’s no one more easily convinced of one’s lies than the liar himself. We are easily given to believing our own lies. We want to; it seems to make life easier when we do. Life is more difficult for those who see the world differently from the others. It requires some effort and strain to challenge established structures, habits, and notions. It’s disheartening to endeavour toward something no one else but you can else envision.

Let’s say the artist suppresses his voice and he finds he’s doing so successfully: he’s lost the urge and any skill he might have had, which further confirms his belief that he’s not an artist. But, I think, what the artist doesn’t realize is that the impulse to create is not his to control. It is an energy, a force, that has a life of its own. He is the vessel, the conduit for this creative force. His body, his heart, and his mind are the medium for this energy in this world. The force is of other-worldly provenance.

Bottled up within an earthen vessel the other-worldly force churns. Like a tornado, which draws more and more energy to itself as it spins within the vessel that is the unexpressed artist, until finally it bursts forth, causing destruction to anything around it, or, at the very least, to the human vessel within which it was contained. One possible example of the former scenario is Adolf Hitler. He’s extreme. As a result of his repression of his artistic energy, he became frustrated, which turned to despondence, which in turn became anger which turned into hatred.

Examples of the latter scenario – of the artistic forced-turned-self-destructive – is all too common. We know many of these lost artists. Regardless of what they do for a living, ie. working a bank or some other corporation, you can spot them by how well they compose a photograph, for instance. Or they way the put flowers together. Or the color of socks they choose. Or the shape of their glasses. Or by how much they like to sing. Or doodle. Or dance. These lost artists will reveal only very small and seemingly insignificant hints like these. It’s within these miniscule corrals that they have let themselves run amok. They have told themselves and others that these perversions from the ordinary and merely “hobbies, but nothing they take seriously.”

Hobbies are things we enjoy doing but which we have restricted ourselves from completely indulging in. I don’t think that, by nature, there really are such things as hobbies. The notion of the ‘hobby’ is something we came up with to excuse ourselves for giving into a day-to-day that we hate, a lifestyle that goes against our nature. If we enjoy doing something, love something, or are good at something it’s for a reason.

Unfortunately, sometimes you can also spot the lost artist, the closeted artist, by how much the person drink, or how often he does drugs, or loses himself in some other addiction, i.e. to money, to fame, to shopping, etc. (Edie Sedgwick immediately comes to mind right now only because I saw Factory Girl last night.)