"The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its supreme purpose through him."
-- Carl Jung
*
Every quote you come across like the one above is taken out of context. Or, I suppose, the context could be the quote itself, with words surrounding it to support its meaning. This said, I would love to accept Carl Jung's words as they stand. Not change a thing. I like the idea of -- and this is my interpretation -- the "artist" needing to create, even while not knowing what he or she is going to create to some completion.
It's part divine intervention, part determinism -- and part "this is who I am, so I must keep on the path that's been chosen for me." Of course, that last line being neither divine intervention nor determinism, except by the person saying the words. How many times have you come across a person who says, "I'm going to live in my car, because I am an artist, and that's what artists do." As in, we need to starve first, or be homeless, or whatever. A variation on the idea.
Some people would use Jung's words as an excuse for "not creating" -- because the "supreme purpose" has yet to be realized. Check their watches, and look up and say, "Nope, hasn't arrived yet. Isn't time yet. And I just had this watch checked yesterday, so I know it's precise right down to the second."
*
Okay, it's a little before 4 a.m. ET, and I'm waxing all philosophical about a basically philosophical quote.
But this is what I will accept -- in accepting Carl Jung's words. I will accept that each of us is an artist. It's just that some people do the creating, and others do the inspiring. Sometimes we trade places, too. Everything is collaborative.
It's the writer who sits next to an old man on the bus and listens to the man's story, and then goes back to a version of The Little Room and sets it all down on paper, and adds some plot, takes some away, throws in a couple more characters, and voila, it's a creative work, a finished piece, good or bad. Yet the supreme purpose has been realized.
The story would have never happened without that old man on the bus. So isn't he as much of an artist as the artist who claims the title?
We need each other. And we shouldn't feel ashamed or bad or guilty about "feeding" off of one another. That is, listening, observing -- utilizing all of our senses to take in what will become the raw materials for the "something" we don't know yet.
*
Right now there's a bird's nest perched on the eaves next door, and yesterday I spent time watching the nest and the mother bird as she protected it. When I tried to take a picture with my cell phone, she attempted to distract me by moving away from the nest and chattering at me with chirps that I'm sure were dire warnings in bird talk. There's a story there somewhere.
Actually, the story really got going when the woman who lives in the house came outside in her house dress and asked me if something was wrong with her roof. So we talked about birds, and their nests, and then we talked about flowers, and how the cats next door to her on the other side like her flowerbed better than the dirt in their own yard because it's "softer." I'm not sure how this all fits together, and maybe it's three or four or a dozen stories, yet to be told, in due time.
*
And I just love it when people talk in loud voices so I can listen in. Sometimes I just like listening period. And then taking this all back the The Little Room and making my own sense of it in a way that can entertain, or, if I am very lucky that day, and if the supreme purpose has shot itself through my veins like a bolt of lightning (being in the "zone," so to speak), come out of the act of creation with something that can make another person feel.
That's a gift on both sides, from me -- and for me.
It would have never happened, though, if I hadn't felt something first. Been open to feeling, or listening, that is. From one of those other artists out there, I mean -- the woman next door in her house dress ... or the man on the bus, for example.
-- Carl Jung
*
Every quote you come across like the one above is taken out of context. Or, I suppose, the context could be the quote itself, with words surrounding it to support its meaning. This said, I would love to accept Carl Jung's words as they stand. Not change a thing. I like the idea of -- and this is my interpretation -- the "artist" needing to create, even while not knowing what he or she is going to create to some completion.
It's part divine intervention, part determinism -- and part "this is who I am, so I must keep on the path that's been chosen for me." Of course, that last line being neither divine intervention nor determinism, except by the person saying the words. How many times have you come across a person who says, "I'm going to live in my car, because I am an artist, and that's what artists do." As in, we need to starve first, or be homeless, or whatever. A variation on the idea.
Some people would use Jung's words as an excuse for "not creating" -- because the "supreme purpose" has yet to be realized. Check their watches, and look up and say, "Nope, hasn't arrived yet. Isn't time yet. And I just had this watch checked yesterday, so I know it's precise right down to the second."
*
Okay, it's a little before 4 a.m. ET, and I'm waxing all philosophical about a basically philosophical quote.
But this is what I will accept -- in accepting Carl Jung's words. I will accept that each of us is an artist. It's just that some people do the creating, and others do the inspiring. Sometimes we trade places, too. Everything is collaborative.
It's the writer who sits next to an old man on the bus and listens to the man's story, and then goes back to a version of The Little Room and sets it all down on paper, and adds some plot, takes some away, throws in a couple more characters, and voila, it's a creative work, a finished piece, good or bad. Yet the supreme purpose has been realized.
The story would have never happened without that old man on the bus. So isn't he as much of an artist as the artist who claims the title?
We need each other. And we shouldn't feel ashamed or bad or guilty about "feeding" off of one another. That is, listening, observing -- utilizing all of our senses to take in what will become the raw materials for the "something" we don't know yet.
*
Right now there's a bird's nest perched on the eaves next door, and yesterday I spent time watching the nest and the mother bird as she protected it. When I tried to take a picture with my cell phone, she attempted to distract me by moving away from the nest and chattering at me with chirps that I'm sure were dire warnings in bird talk. There's a story there somewhere.
Actually, the story really got going when the woman who lives in the house came outside in her house dress and asked me if something was wrong with her roof. So we talked about birds, and their nests, and then we talked about flowers, and how the cats next door to her on the other side like her flowerbed better than the dirt in their own yard because it's "softer." I'm not sure how this all fits together, and maybe it's three or four or a dozen stories, yet to be told, in due time.
*
And I just love it when people talk in loud voices so I can listen in. Sometimes I just like listening period. And then taking this all back the The Little Room and making my own sense of it in a way that can entertain, or, if I am very lucky that day, and if the supreme purpose has shot itself through my veins like a bolt of lightning (being in the "zone," so to speak), come out of the act of creation with something that can make another person feel.
That's a gift on both sides, from me -- and for me.
It would have never happened, though, if I hadn't felt something first. Been open to feeling, or listening, that is. From one of those other artists out there, I mean -- the woman next door in her house dress ... or the man on the bus, for example.
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