Artists Lead The Way

“At the age of six years, I amazed my parents and their friends by my gift, very much of the sort that mediums have, of ‘seeing things in another way’. I have always seen what others do not see; and what they did see, I could not…I had a paranoiac spirit.” -Salvador Dali

“In 1851, Melville calved an enormous spouting beast of a book, Moby-Dick, which involved a crazed sea captain hell-bent on destroying the whale that tore off his leg. The book sold poorly. After two more failed novels, Melville, a father of four, ditched prose for poetry, grew ever more melancholic and insolvent, and became a customs inspector on the New York docks, a job he held for nineteen years. His death in 1891 went virtually unnoticed…’Melville was a nineteenth-century author writing for a twentieth-century audience,” explains Columbia professor Andrew Delbanco, author of the 2005 biography Melville: His World and Work. ‘He used stream of consciousness long before Stein or Joyce; he acknowledged America’s predatory power as well as its great promise; he defied convention in writing about sex; and perhaps most shocking of all, he took seriously the possibility of a godless universe. In his time, there was a limited market for these insights and innovations.” -excerpt from article, How Scholars Rescued the Author of Moby-Dick from the Waters of Oblivion in Columbia Magazine

“If you see tremendous beauty or tremendous pain where other people see little or nothing at all, you’re confronted with big feelings all the time. These emotions can be confusing and overwhelming. When those around you don’t see what you see and feel what you feel, this can lead to a sense of isolation and a general feeling of not belonging, of otherness. These charged emotions, powerful when expressed in the work, are the same dark clouds that beg to be numbed to allow sleep or to get out of bed and face the day in the morning. It’s a blessing and a curse.” -Rick Rubin, The Creative Act

Artists see things before anyone else does. Whether that’s making art ahead of its time, or art that influences science and other fields (like Salvador Dali did as this article points out), or setting trends (e.g. fashion, neighborhoods), or being prophets that call out injustice and hypocrisy, artists very often lead the way.

Unfortunately, this gift of “seeing” can come with a heavy burden and price. You can be ignored, criticized or feel like a failure.

But don’t let that stop you.

Our world needs artists now more than ever.

Go make your art.

Go lead the way.

Thank you for your courage and your heart and your vulnerability.