The Artist

Summary

The text describes the life and philosophy of a nonconformist artist who embraces poverty and solitude to nurture his art amidst a superficial and pretentious modern society.

Abstract

The Artist is depicted as a disillusioned figure navigating through the haze of contemporary hysteria and pretentiousness, choosing to engage more with the past and the shadows than with the living and the light. With empty pockets and a bulging soul, he is a poetic defiant, an offbeat dreamer, and a malcontent who renounces worldly success for artistic integrity. He finds beauty in the works of artists like Van Gogh, Hopper, and Andrew Wyeth, and disdains the senseless sermons of his time. The Artist's deliberate austerity and lack of interest in societal expectations allow him to create perilously from the depths of his being. Possessed by a daemonic force, he works in the dark, transforming dreams into tangible form and revealing truth through the lies of his era. He stands as an awakener, an emancipator, and a defector of the human race.

Opinions

The Artist renounces material wealth and societal norms, valuing the inner light of artistic integrity over worldly success.
He communes with the dead and past art, finding more solace and inspiration in the shadows and the works of masters than in the superficiality of the present.
The Artist is critical of modern society's idolatry of appearances and its susceptibility to the ludicrous demagoguery of the day.
He rejects the senseless sermons and the exaggerated purity championed by priests, pundits, and academics, preferring the lyrical expressions of the collective unconscious.
The Artist's austerity is a conscious choice that enables him to tap into his deepest creativity, allowing for the birth of art that transcends the manufactured illusions of a frantic era.
In his solitude, The Artist is driven by some higher daemonic being, working tirelessly in the shadows to stretch his sensibilities and beautify the lies that lead to a greater truth.

The Artist

“…if he is an artist, he will be compelled to make sacrifices which worldly people find absurd and unnecessary. In following the inner light he will inevitably choose… poverty. And, if he has in him the makings of a great artist, he may renounce everything, even his art.”

~ Henry Miller

Disillusioned but alive, he saunters slowly through the haze of hysteria in an age of a pretentious outrage.

He’s a man these days who communes more with the dead than the living, a man who finds more beauty in the shadows than the light, a man with empty pockets and a bulging soul — an offbeat dreamer, an artist a malcontent condemned to the eternal fire of his poetic defiance.

In the petty hours of the light, he holds his cards close to his chest and does his best to compromise with what’s been given. His hat sits low to disguise the eyes of an exile, forever roving the forlorn streets of a hijacked future alone the tide of his ancient blood ebbing beneath disintegrating flesh.

Most nights, you’ll find him in his old shack on the outskirts of the civilized world sitting in the mushroom glow of a midnight candle with a vintage hardpack in his hands. When he reads he no longer agrees or disagrees with the sentiments of the dead. He’s at ease among words, a curious spectator stirred by the lyrical upchuck of the collective unconscious.

The priests and pundits and academics are no longer served by his attention. He’d rather meditate on the paintings of Van Gogh, Hopper, and Andrew Wyeth than to castrate his senses with the senseless sermons of the day.

The bloodless lust of the over-civilized eye had always sickened him — their idolatry of appearances, their exaggerations of purity, their incessant need for glittering illusions to go on living. Never re-examining the underlying deceptions that sustain their lives, they live in the clutches of cliches, their voices dull and tremulous, their minds easily susceptible to the assault of the most ludicrous demagoguery.

He owns very little and holds no delusions of duty and status and causes. Out of his deliberate austerity he’s bestowed the ultimate silence needed to create perilously from the deepest crevices of his ancient soul, transforming dream to flesh, triumphing over the manufactured illusions of a frantic era.

Possessed by some daemonic being higher than himself, there he is, alone, as the world burns, working in the dark, forging in the shadows, stretching his sensibilities to the brink of madness, divulging his whole soul to the destructive force of reality, beautifying the lies that lead to the ultimate truth.

He’s the awakener, the emancipator, a defector of the human race.

He’s an artist.

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