Art

Even if you have only one person who likes your work, is that not enough?

That was in reply to me saying I have no interest in starting a travel blog because I'm not sure longform is relevant anymore and I don't think there would be an audience for it.

If you write only for yourself, is that akin to masturbation?

If you write just for that one person who likes your work, and fail to engage more, is that a lack of aspiration/ambition? An admission of failure?

I valued the comment, even though it was nothing original nor something that I have not read before, because it came from the Artist. Perhaps I felt that he understood crippling self-doubt, the need to feel that your work is connecting with an audience and simultaneously, the self-loathing in wanting to be liked and validated as an artist.

I think about what he said about despising small-town provincial art sometimes, especially when I wander around the odd gallery here or glance over a street mural. All these tedious landscape paintings and sculptures of wildlife and pseudo conceptual installations depicting the damage humankind is doing to the environment, unironically hoping to provoke self-reflection and encourage recycling.

Tedious.

I miss big ideas and small but in-depth introspection. I miss unusual points-of-view and minds that greedily chomp up the world before regurgitating it in outlandish gestures. I miss boldness that requires great leaps of mind rather than a jump off a cliff. I miss courage that has to do with putting your raw self out there in an interpretation, and not therapy speak over insipid conversation and cheap liquor.

I need to get back to a big city, don't I? To being myself?