I’m not sure when I felt comfortable calling myself an artist. I think I expected some moment of transformation – a day I’d wake up and say, “Hey, it happened, I’m different now.” Or, you know, I’d read a book about “How to be an Artist” and then I’d just be one if I followed the step-by-step guide – 4 weeks to becoming an artist. I think I imagined it to be like some diet book or some self-help book. Maybe if I just changed my social media profiles to tell people I was one now, that would do it? But, no. None of that ever happened.
To be honest, I don’t know how or when it happened. I only realised it did when I started to look back through this journal and realised something – change isn’t slow, we just imagine it to be fast.
Bursting forth from the cocoon
We love a good bursting forth story. A ‘transformation’. But the reality is transformation take time and energy, it’s normally slow and banal and requires a focus on the little, boring things. It’s just that we don’t see any of that in public because all the public cares about is the butterfly.
The question is, what do we need to do to be something? Because that’s what it is – the doing makes the being. One of the shortcuts we have for getting to know a stranger is the question, “What do you do?” What we mean is “What do you do for work?” or “How do you make a living?” And, curiously enough, we respond with “I’m a…”. It’s either “I’m a plumber” or “I’m a lawyer,” or “I’m a teacher” and so on. Someone asks us we do and we respond but saying what we are. Interesting.
And so if what we do is what we are, then, to be an artist, we just need to do what artists do. And not just occasionally, a lot. No one calls themselves a plumber if they replace a washer on a tap once a year. No one calls themselves a teacher if they share a recipe with a friend occasionally or provide some occasional advice to someone who seeks it. It seems that we already know that what you are is what you do, consistently.
So, what do artists do?
There are probably a million books on what artists are supposed to do to be considered artists. But, I don’t care about those things. In my journey, what I’ve learned to do, consistently, is become increasingly comfortable with seeking answers to questions that no one else but me has asked, and then put those efforts into the public. That’s it. But, it’s also really difficult. It still is. I’ve been doing that for 7 years now and, at some point along the way, realised that because I’ve been doing it, I’ve become it. It may not be the caterpillar to butterfly transformation emergence I’d had hoped it would be but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t work like that with anything that’s as important as changing your identity.