Points on How to Activate The Viable Threat
In Read and Write Jean Paul Satre’s biography he sites that he is like a knight in shining armor for his audience. He says he saves them by writing. If he does not write he feels pain and the more he procrastinates the more intense the pain becomes.
Jean has found a way of inducing the progressive dreadful threat that will enable him to make art. A viable threat is a system that an art maker designs or concocts to make sure that quality art is produced regularly. This is akin to Steven Pressfield thesis on overcoming Resistance in The War of Art.
The noonday demon of opposition to art, finds a field day in the mind and heart of the creator, who has unresolved system of overcoming the allurements and seductions of distraction in creating art.
Welcome to a short poetic journey of specific threats that yield the making of art.
The Artist
The first government that makes things happen is meted to the Artist. It is more effective when she/he conjures it. Creating is subject to the weight of discipline induced by the artist. Internal motivation or inspiration to do so goes a long way in the journey of creating and making of art. The muse my never show up but art must be made. The muse is figurative and a figure of a creative mind that is meddling with artistic sloth. The muse lives in a world of abstraction. Those that believe in the existence of the muse and produce art every often have just found a way to make him believable in showing up so that art can be made — they should teach us That Way.
Those who have managed to exorcise him so that they have no excuse to not create should also enlighten us so that we may be free of the slouched non-productive shoulders of procrastination. In both cases an effective way, manner or method to create is operational. Find yours and use it surgically on your self. The tumor of the idea of art without the creation of it lingers for a while then suddenly bites its terminal fang inside our core to wit we become the work of art called The Muse Waiter.
The Audience
An audience is the gang with appetite for your art. They are waiting. They may stretch your last piece of art until the next delivery comes their way. But an audience can in some way tell when the delays and lethargy of producing art starts to kick in. An artist does not necessarily produce art to be consumed but it is undeniable that every form of art has a degree of value, which could be objective or subjective. Very few of us will make a thing without expecting a grain of response. The audience is a gift. They are part of the chain of the energy of productivity. The audience’s rationale for liking your art or you in person varies; it is advisable that you do not find out why. Just make art. Just create. There will be a time when your audience turns and matures into fans. When they become fans you begin to be indebted to them. Your art becomes their art. The threat of postponement to the disappointment of a genuine fan is like sneaking a bug into the Bull Market on Wall Street. It takes time to have an audience and it takes depth to have a fan. Both are needed and both will serve you.
The Call
There is an invisible pinch in the vein of the creator that ties to him/her something beyond his skill. It comes out like an innate discovery of a compulsory mandate. When it is awakened it bursts out like a vital sense or almost like an organ. It is like a second heart that runs on something stronger than oxygen. This thing wakes you up, buzzes and stings deep. All your life you are driven in pursuit for words to describe it. Every time you think you have it figured out it coughs out its mystic. The Call may start as a signal, a vibe, a whisper, and an echo then a word. It is there tucked in your desires, wounds and imaginations. It is wrapped in your musings, curiosity and epiphanies; it is a gift of life. Do not lose it or fear losing it. It turns out that it is a rebel twin to your personality where true art is hidden.
The Delay
Sometimes art can delay. This can be a delicate valley to be found in. There is no place that art cannot be born from and made. When life attempts to singe you and ash you out, embrace it! The artist sometimes gets to have an appointment with delay or despair. He becomes a choreographer of mood. If only to you is left a whisper or an echo use it. Use it to compose, to write or to brush. Do not waste pain; it is the currency of interpretation and the eye that has been dealt a chance to grow. Poems and Prose have come from some of these shelves of life. Humor and life can be supplied in a work of art from the bottom of life. The station of delay and devastation should be treated with contemplation. Contemplation breeds observation and observation then breeds action (Art).
The Deadline
At some point we have to ship our art. Deadlines are terminuses of progress. They are stamps of beginning(s) and end(s). Where a work of art ends another one can begin. There is no endless art. There has to be space for junctions of surprises and wonder. A deadline is a determination of delivery. A promise must be fulfilled and be enjoyed in its maturity. Deadlines are stamps of responsibility and commitment. You have drawn, written, sculptured till the end. The deadline is the convergence of the artist, the audience, the call and the delay. All these are the viable threats we must embrace if we have to make art.
