Mike Murray essay -- Inner Voice

8 January 2007

Inner Voice

--by Mike Murray

They say all kinds of things. You know who "they" are. They are the ones who offer thoroughly sound advice. They are parents, teachers, friends. Their advice is meant to ease your journey through life. It is meant to help you navigate the barriers, sidestep the land mines.

They mean well. No question, they have your welfare at heart. They only wish to spare you pain; they only wish to deliver you to a safe, secure future.

And so the course they suggest for you is one of lesser resistance. But it is also one of lesser reward. At least, of the kind of reward you seek. For what you covet most is not relief from struggle, or difficulty, or disapproval.

What you pursue is hard to explain. You have a passion, and it drives you away from beaten paths. It makes you willing to sacrifice and to forgo the acknowledgement attendant to traditional achievement.

You are not like other people, and you know it. You have always known it. You are not motivated by money or by any of the typical trappings of success. Sure, you need a roof over your head and food to eat, same as everyone else. But a fancy house, an expensive car, public acclaim -- these mean little to you.

You understand why others act as they do. At least, you think you do. And on rare occasions, you even envy them. You sometimes wish that you, too, could do things that get rewarded. Or at the very least, things that escape scorn and ridicule. Others seem so easily to touch the right bases, to jump through the proper hoops.

They suffer some too, you reckon. But their lower-risk progressions through life seem infrequently to land them in the ditches in which you so often find yourself.

Still, on most days you are comfortable with the choices you make and the consequences that result. It wouldn't matter if you weren't; you cannot help yourself. You proceed through life in the only way you can. You are compelled.

You are a round peg in a square hole. You are what people call "artistic" -- often dismissively so. And whether your medium is paint, music, clay, or words, your approach to life is hard for many to comprehend. You aren't motivated by money. You don't seek approval. What looks to others like failure does not to you. The only way you can fail in your own eyes is to walk away from doing what you believe you should, from what you know you must.

And to the dismay of some, you do not avoid pain. Often, you welcome it. Revel in it. How can you adequately explain the reasons to those so thoroughly different in outlook and approach? How could you hope to ever make them see? Dealing with, and working through, pain sometimes leads you to your greatest understanding and expression. How can you convey to caring folk that easing your suffering to too great a degree would only limit you?

As there is with many old saws, there is a kernel of truth in the notion that it is necessary to suffer for one's art. Comfort occasionally produces extraordinary result; discomfort much more often does. Struggling through turbulent, troubled water provides more insight than does sailing a calm sea.

Moreover, not only is it true that history has known many "starving artists," you believe it well that it is so. Deprivation leads to inspiration in a way that privilege never will. And so you are intrigued by those who seek to publicly fund "the arts."

Well-intentioned though they may be, they fail to grasp the fact that money will never -- in even the remotest of ways -- be the catalyst for creativity. To be sure, there have always been patrons and angels -- people who have helped artists limp along. But modern funding of the arts is primarily a way of financing the presentation of art, not the creation of it.

Very few public dollars find their way to genuine artists. Cash instead compensates performers; it buys bricks and mortar; it pays administrative salaries. (It does other things, too. Things many taxpayers would object to, if only they knew.)

Contemporary arts funding is more a vehicle for defraying costs associated with the mechanisms of art delivery than it is a way of supporting art itself. Funds typically cover overhead; they seldom have anything to do with the direct generation of art. To be sure, public support for the arts has some utility, delivering as it does access and appreciation to wider audiences.

But true artists seldom benefit. Nor is it clear that they need to; artists have never been motivated -- much less inspired -- by money. Courting consumers and satisfying markets would sorely constrain their efforts, diminish their results.

Modest compensations aside (compensations that history routinely proves paltry), artists have always created. And they always will. They will do what they must, irrespective of reward or recognition. They will do what they must, regardless of pain and suffering -- or perhaps, even, assisted by those twin muses.

As you consider such things, you realize that you will never be able to adequately explain to caring, well-meaning folks that their efforts at steering you onto an easier path are misguided. Easing your struggle, brightening your mood -- these could be counter-productive. A lightened load and a sunnier disposition could very well stifle inspiration. Besides, you are happy in your way. People needn't worry on your account; you are doing what you love to do.

What you may lack in safety and security, you more than make up for in passionate pursuit. What looks to be a difficult course to some is the only one you could ever consider. It is, in fact, for others that you have sympathy. You can't imagine anything more intolerable than being one of the many. You can't imagine any burden greater than one that dictates (if only for the sake of others) a life of conformity. Whether it is apparent or not, you know that you are indulged.

And so you want to tell those who fret about you that they needn't. You are fine, outward appearances to the contrary. You perfectly understand the mindset of the long-distance runner. While some see him as "lonely," he is instead perfectly contented. He is thoroughly absorbed; he is fully engaged in that which fulfills him. And when told he looks awful, he is grateful. Though his visage is contorted it is nevertheless a badge of honor -- being, as it is, reflective of supreme effort. Similarly, you know that you probably look your worst when you are in the throes of your deepest artistic exploration.

At such times your inner voice is speaking most clearly, and you are listening. You are going your own way. You have to.