
“To know if you’re an artist or not, is like breathing.
You don’t question breathing.”
~Marina Abramovic
I knew I wasn’t a writer.
I knew it when people, experts, professionals and so on, advised me to read books, study other writers, take courses in writing, or think about who my frickin’ audience is.
I still get worked up about how absolutely horrendous this whole culture is, of writing, writers and those who aspire to become one.
I mean: Aspiring to be a writer?
What is that even supposed to mean?
The way I see it, there’s no such thing as becoming a writer.
It’s something you are, not something you become. Unless you’re talking about a copy writing, someone writing for money. That is a choice, and not something which, as Charles Bukowski said it, “comes bursting out of you”.
Even the whole write daily thing?
You better be doing that because writing is a soul work experience for you.
And you get suicidal if you let the daily grind take over.
Then go ahead. Write daily.
But never say you will write daily – or draw, paint, sculpt, create – because you think you have to in order to call yourself an artist. Or because you think it will make you a better one.
Writing, the way I see it, do it, live it?
Is because you have something to say.
You should feel you have to type furiously, or the message is going to escape, the idea will be lost, and you will never get her back. Not be concerned with what to write or how to put words in the right order, so that the message comes across.
The message always comes across, exactly in the way it is supposed to, as long as you get out of your own way.
It’s not even your story, your idea, your message.
It’s something the Universe gave you, most likely after you created space in your life, and did the internal work of getting your head around a certain topic. But nevertheless the message itself came to you, and wants to be expressed through you.
Today I started wondering whether I should even call myself a writer. I’ve always identified more with artists, like performers and painters, whose craft can not be boxed up and sold. Or at least not that easily.
No one gets into those lines of work without having that sense of urgency that they simply can’t not do it.
For me writing is about that: letting an urgent message out.
It is the final -and most rewarding – stage of thinking. Sometimes it is directly linked to something I ve been actively shaping ideas around.
Sometimes it’s a crispy new thought, which feels even more like a live entity, that will escape if I don’t put her into words immediately.
But either way, the writing is always the final stage.
The time I spend in my head?
That is my real work.
The inspiration I seek?
Also my real work.
If I felt compelled to have a daily routine, it would be to look for inspiration.
To understand myself and the world, at a deeper level. To find meaning.
And then when I have these light bulb moments, when I see connections, to sprint to my notebook to scribble it down immediately.
Before I lose it.
So I could see why I am not a writer when I clearly have so little interest for the craft.
But expressionist would suit me.
Or simply “artist”.
<3LSH
An unexamined life is not worth living
Something to remember is the thirty-ninth chapter from Project M.
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