But I held on to that note like a drowning man holds on to a piece of passing wreckage. I was acknowledged; I was real; I was worthy of a response from a man whose life was inconceivably greater and more resolved than mine. Perhaps I was not going to drown.
I hope that by writing to you I can give you some of the same solace, because you are real, you are worthy, your dreams are worth pursuing. And you are not going to drown.
I know, because I have walked the same time-honoured path. All artists have. We have shared your doubts. We have wrestled the same demons and held the same dreams. And all of us would tell you the same thing: though it is not an easy journey, it is a journey worth taking.
You will live in a world of uncertainty, never knowing if your creations are good enough, always fearing financial cataclysm, unsure if your dreams are more than self-delusion, and vulnerable to feelings of persecution and self-doubt. You will see others with less talent accomplishing more and feel the sting of unwarranted criticism. You will feel angry, lonely, unappreciated, and misunderstood.
But you will also live in a world of joy, with its magical moments when the act of creation lifts you and propels you with a power that seems to come from beyond yourself. You will remain constantly vibrant and young at heart because your urge to create will keep your spirit alive and interested in the world around you long after others in other professions have become weary and soul-deadened in the monotonous sameness of their everyday lives. And you will own your own time, and know the miraculous experience of having intimate conversations with people long dead and far away through your personal dialogue with their art. You will know what it is to work with love.
Few people on the outside will understand the precarious nature of this life. They will see only the accolades and accomplishments, the apparent freedom and the finished products of your efforts.
They will not understand that the person who creates something from the intimacy of their own imagination and places it before others as a gift of the creative spirit stands on the precipice of failure and rejection – or, worse yet, mediocrity – at every moment. That by creating a work of art – a performance, a painting, a piece of writing or anything else – you have, metaphorically speaking, brought a child into the world, and the rejection of a child of your creation hurts you with the pain of a parent watching their child be ignored, demeaned, and seen as unworthy.
These are things that you will come to know if you devote yourself to a life in the arts. It is not a life for everyone. But if you have the courage to choose it, you will have embarked upon one of life’s great adventures. You will have joined the tribe of the dreamers, the keepers of the stories, the shapers of visions and caretakers of the imagination. You will have chosen to set your sights on the stars.
I hope you will choose to become one of us. We come from many different backgrounds, with many different talents and many different dreams. But there is one truth we all share. If we had it to do again, we would choose the very same path.
This is a life truly worth living.
All my best,
Kent
When I had finished my response, I sat back and read what I had written. It seemed good, and it felt good. With luck, my letter would touch Jennifer as Norman Mailer’s letter had touched me and would help her chart a course in life that was worthy of her dreams.
I sealed it up and sent it off.
But I continued to be haunted by the earnest hunger and yearning of her words. That she had reached out to me, sharing her deepest fears and dreams, was both humbling and daunting.
I kept thinking back to a time several years before when I had been asked to participate in a sweat lodge with some Lakota friends deep in the hills of the Pine Ridge Indian reservation in western South Dakota. They were honouring me for my thirty years of working as an ally of the Native people. By sheer coincidence, the sweat took place on the day of my sixtieth birthday. It gave even greater meaning to an already profound experience.
A sweat lodge is not something to be taken lightly. It is a ceremony of deep significance – a religious practice, actually – meant to cleanse and clarify those who attend. It should be undertaken only with an open heart.
In the course of the ceremony in the almost unbearable heat of the pitch-dark lodge, everyone is asked to speak what is in their heart. When my turn came, I said, almost without thinking, ‘I want to learn how to be an elder.’ I meant it in the most profound sense of the term.
Over the years, I had become close to the Native people and immersed in their way of understanding. For them, life is not a straight line from birth to death, with the time of central importance being the years in the middle, but a circle, like the seasons, where each age has its gifts and responsibilities. The elders, as the only ones who have experienced all the seasons of life, have the responsibility of sharing the wisdom they have gained on their life’s journey.
Jennifer’s letter had brought that experience back to me. As I reflected on her letter and the others like it I had received over the years, I realised that the time had come for me to take on the responsibility I had prayed about in that sweat lodge. It was time for me to speak, as an elder and a teacher, about what it means to live a life in the arts.
I had spent thirty years living the life of the writer, and twenty before that as a practising sculptor. I knew the heart of the artistic life – its dreams and fears, its unspoken challenges, and its unexpected rewards. It was time to share my thoughts about what it meant to live the life of the artist, so that not only Jennifer but all the Jennifers of the world – and all those who had once been like Jennifer but had been forced to put their artistic dreams on hold, or those who had come late to the artistic journey – could learn from my experience and have a glimpse into the magic that a life in the arts offers.
And so this book was born.
In it I try to share, with as much honesty as I can, some of what I have learned on my artistic journey. I offer it to all of you who have fallen under the spell of the arts and dream of giving voice to the creative spirit that lives inside of you. But most of all I offer it as a gift to you who are just beginning on your artistic journey and feel the arts pulling on you, like the moon pulls on the tides, and want to know something of what your journey will be like.
To all of you, and any others who wish to have a glimpse into this life that so many admire and so few understand, I offer these words with an open heart.
May they give you insight, inspiration, and courage.
I hope you find them worthy of your time.
THE JOURNEY BEGINS
1
Courting the Muse
Finding the place where time stands still
‘To this day I do not know whether the power which has inspired my works is something related to religion, or is indeed religion itself’ Kathe Kollwitz
‘. . . when I am alone with my notes, my heart pounds and the tears stream from my eyes, and my emotion and my joys are too much to bear.’
