A still, small voice...Thoughts about being an artist

Normally, this blog is not a blog for up-to-the-minute news posts like the ones I’ve posted recently. I created it as place where I can meander through the landscape of being an artist who writes. Some place where I can share things that inspire me, lessons I’ve learned, quirks that amuse me.

However, being an artist in this world means being in the world. It means being affected by the world—not holding myself apart from the events that affect everyone, but fully immersing myself into the heart of them. I don’t know where people get the idea that artists are a different species of human being. Granted, most of us don’t fit into the acceptable version of ‘normal’ but that’s part of the hard-wiring of any artist. For, what is art but a way to interrupt people’s well-trod direction? What is art if it doesn’t reach down inside of people and give them words for the feelings or perceptions that they always knew were true, but could never name? What is art if it does not change the world, one word at a time, one musical note at a time, one person at a time? as William Saroyan said through one of his characters,

Go ahead. Fire your feeble guns. You won't kill anything. There will always be poets in the world.

There isn’t any romance in being an artist. At least for me. It’s damned hard work. I’d rather be a gardener. But, I’m not allowed to ignore that still, small voice calling inside of me.

Don’t get me wrong, I really try. I’m a master at avoidance. A maven of procrastination. A genius at denial. I'll try anything not to listen to that voice telling me what is real and what is not. Who tells me when something is really off in the world around me. Or when something needs to be said, no matter how naked it makes me feel. That’s my process. If I don’t eventually pay attention to these pokes, they will get my attention in a more unpleasant way.

These days, I’m thinking in larger and larger swirls of things that don’t seem to be connected at the very first glance. Why I cried when Susan Boyle opened her mouth and sang like an angel. Why I feel angry every time I hear the words ‘bail-out.’ Why I feel camaraderie when I meet refugees from other countries. What my friend, Sophie must be feeling after her stroke left her unable to speak any of the seven languages she knows. These thoughts appear unrelated on the face of things, but there is a unifying theme...and I will find it. I must. I don’t have any other choice. That still, small voice keeps badgering me.

As out-of-place as I have felt most of my life, there is a larger part of me that knows that everything I feel—other people are also feeling. A part of me that knows that I am ‘Everyman'—or, as a friend of mine says, “Yes, you are unique—just like everybody else...” It’s that part of me that knows that if I just stood up and said what’s on my mind, I would hear a chorus of sighs— “Me, too.”

The trouble with this is that it requires full exposure. The way that one of my mentors, Lonne Elder, III, once said he felt when he faced a blank page...“I feel like I just got caught, at high noon, in the store front window of Bloomingdales, making love to my mother.” It breaks the rules when you point a light in secret corners. It’s disobedience. Insurgency. It’s rebellion at the most transcendent level to spit out what everyone feels but no one is admitting. It’s dangerous too. You could get arrested by the credibility police and have your voice removed. Worse, you might be met with every artist’s nightmare... the blank stare.

But that still, small voice persists. Whose voice is it? Is it my voice? It doesn’t feel like it. But then again, it does. Is it the voice of God? I’d be embarrassed to even consider that. But Elijah wasn't.

Copyright © 2009 Stephanie Ericsson All Rights Reserved