THE ARTISTS ALMANAC: A Thesis of Sorts

Abstract

The life of an artist is an impossible journey to an undesirable place. A quest to a mythic location that no one can quite describe, a destination that is always changing. The path is circuitous and by the very nature of its constant state of flux it is in a perpetual state of uncharted. To find oneself having miraculously arrived on dry land at the end, planted however unsurely on shore, one will have also imagined with the entirety of their mind the shore into being. While infinitely entangled and connected, the place that one arrives is one totally unique from that of anyone else. The notion of a right or true path for the life of an artist, the perfect school or residency to catapult one forward, the right type of work to make, is illogical at its very core. To follow those paths is to end up at the same destination that “people” always talk about trying to avoid. There, jostling along crowded shores, one finds that their island paradise is a corporate theme park. The question then comes into focus, why set out on this journey? Must we lay down a map and try to find within it hidden lands that beguile us with promises of opportunity and notoriety? Perhaps we are trapped within our own use of language, a society more advanced in its thought than its language can keep up with. To instead throw away the map and wipe the stars out of one’s eyes in exchange for a mentality of using the networks life around you for guidance and direction, embracing a sight rooted in this world and applying those same lusts for the magical in order to create and build that perfect shore right under one’s own feet.