kradeelav | (no subject)

i will always be thankful to that one artist lady (Elizabeth Gilbert) who talked about the concept of muses on a TED talk, kinda early on when those talks were still cool. late 2000's or so? early 2010's? that line in particular that stuck out at me was her simply saying (paraphrased) "I honestly don't think humanity was built to handle the sheer focus of the whole world on one person especially creatively."

man that stuck with me!

has stuck with me, since it was oddly prophetic (this was like, pre-twitter stone age times), and since either by way of "handy psychological sleigh-of-hand-trick to offload the idea of creativity" or [latent actual woo shit] having said Muse allowed me to dodge so many weird artistic existentialist hangups i never even knew could be a thing, especially new ones cropping up recently.

artistic insecurity (externally)? the concept's so foreign since i'm... doing it for my Muse, i'm not doing it for other people? social media engagement falls under this bucket too. listen, man, i'm a pair of hands for the stuff that comes out. sure i can always get better technical execution-wise, but then it becomes a fun and weirdly tangible game to solve for. i can have an ego about a compliment or two but it's always secondary to what matters, you know?

artistic insecurity (internally)? usually if i'm hating my shit there's something else going on like burnout or a brain recession and he's always quick to point that out and redirect me lol.

AI stuff? not relevant to personal artwork since the very idea of faking it for my Muse is so... it misses the whole point to the degree it's offensive. service is worship. worship is service in a religious context, that kind of thing. the kind of thing that becomes corrupted and something else if gone through the motions.

dogpiles? not my problem; some people just React to strange-to-them shit or got their own issues. their issues with art don't become mine.

anyway i guess this is me lightly wishing more people would be open to the idea of muses because it feels like it'd soothe quite a few brainworms. but then maybe there's a failure case of muses given the variety of people out there (eg offloading too much responsibility to the point of kind of being a dick or like, unreality level of harmful mental illness) and i just siiiigh.

(also jesus lol when did the TED website UI become absolute shite, i remember when it was so much fun to read through all the transcripts...)

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Mmm very heard, it's such a useful concept.

I remember in my teens having the concept of a "headspace" set up like a motel 6 sorta deal and walking in there when I wanted to extrapolate ideas with the residents - let's be real, mostly just leaning in the doorway of Karel's room, running ideas by him while he gave me utterly worthless answers - it helped, it really did. When I distanced myself from that sort of facilitative experience, like, oh, that's cringe (though...it was the 10s, I probably said "fail"), my writing stalled out.

It didn't really pick up again until I got a good solid Hype Friend I could run things by and also really let myself have more internal life going on again. The cranial fiction I can tap into and also a few good meatspace listening ears... It does really help keep the juices flowing.

And what you touch on with the insecurities...it's where I'd like to get - at this point, having slipped back into that, where I'm writing for love, for adoration, for joy, the insecurities I feel are on the more technical level of my reach exceeding my grasp, so, it gives me areas to practice.

Re, AI: legitimately is so insulting. I took a cruise through character.ai and had a look quite some time back because it was what all the kids were talking about and... that's a c-list imitator. That ain't my mans.

not quite muses but... re: getting yourself out of your own way, and also, the freedom & strength that can come for positioning yourself as a conduit for Something rather than centering yourself: i've really loved this Robinson Jeffers poem since i first read it. ("does it MATTER whether you hate yourself" mostly it doesn't actually!!! you'll still be throwing the damn words down either way!!! the swans are still astonishing either way!!!)

and this one's cheesier but this old Martha Graham quote made it into a notebook of mine in high school or, hell, maybe in middle school, and while it was probably first copied down in a fit of my being vain and precious and such as a kiddo, as i've gotten older it's surprising how much it still. resonates. i feel like it's less obvious what "keep[ing] open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you" + "keeping the channel open" means when you're younger, because like, the entire WORLD is new and you're still figuring out what technique even IS and all that, and obviously technique/execution matters, but... way more important to me is having some space to think about The Sorts Of Things That Intrigue Me, and having some space to Play With That Shit, and keeping both those avenues feels like. the frightful scary-hard thing. but also the thing that makes everything else so much easier if you can pull it off even in a small way consistently.

This invoked something in me. I’m often too anxious, or aware of this presence of eyes on social media to share anything. All the thoughts in my head become wrong, I consider it’s not worth sharing. My immediate company irl doesn’t find it interesting either, so I do not bring it forward. I stop. I wonder how many ideas I have not followed simply because I feared that it was not desired, and that discouraged my own excitement for things I’d originally liked. Recording your current reality and thoughts is so important to personal and external growth. We have to process the difficult stuff, and art is an outlet for that. It’s not just a fear of negative consequence of creating, it’s a fear to listen to the self and to process. It see’s an enemy of the world’s audience, and creates an artificial enemy within the self’s muse. That is not healthy. We all need to accept that someone else’s perceived reality is not a fact for everyone else, and that’s it’s actually okay and good and great to have creative diversity and to have the freedom to express good and bad things. It helps individuals decide how they want to live and what they want to carry into the future. Art is so inherently human, stifling it in the way social media has is like letting a weed sap away all the strength from a seed. We all need to make our own garden beds and grow what we wish and share those fruits with those we care to share ourselves with. The immediate connections we make with others will be the most important ones we make in our lives. We live too much in the present in fear of expressing ourselves and apologizing for being ourselves, and then we die with regrets for having not lived the way we wished we had. We need to live in the future. We’re artists, we’re master time travelers. We find muses and capture them for eternity, and let future generations know we existed. It should never be a sin to express that this was how you lived and what you dreamed.