The Creative Way of Being

I lost my dad as many of the people, in my life know, almost two years ago. I already liked doing photography before he passed because it felt really nice and rewarding to be good at something I liked doing. I had always loved film and I knew that photography could potentially lead me to film. However, when my dad got sick, it felt almost as if I were drowning. My life’s force felt like it was slipping through my fingers slowly, little by little each day growing more and more tired to the point of being on the verge of collapse. All this was and isn’t something I’ve ever talked about before with anyone and I don’t mean this to say that I was thinking of ending things but I was simply, too tired and I thought my body would eventually just, give in. And in a way, it did, because I eventually stopped trying to be in control and stopped trying to swim against the current of life and instead I just let it take me away. 

I thought I would drown, but instead, I found what became my eventual liferaft and the thing my life would revolve around and that is art. Art became a means to express myself, like this (through writing) or photography and hopefully film soon. I found my life’s purpose through art and after months of thinking, reflecting, and getting as deep as I could to the depths of my being I found a purpose for my art, a clear intent, and my voice. For some time now, I’ve had what I thought were two very important questions regarding art: "What is art?” and “Does art find you or do you find art?”. My initial conclusion based on my experience was that art will find you eventually,  but in reading about it I found a quote that says “The object isn’t to make art, it’s to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable.” I haven’t heard something more true. 

This doesn’t happen to everyone even though all of us are more than capable of creating art, but when you eventually find yourself in that state suddenly, art becomes your mean of expression, the way you look into the deepest, hidden parts of yourself and that’s when art becomes a necessity, a way of being. In a way, it's a mutual meeting because art has always been there, you just hadn’t found yourself in that state of being, and once you find yourself there, whether you consider yourself an artist or not, you find yourself not wanting, but needing to create art because art is a life force, its really, whatever you want it to be but it will drive you like a current, and creating will become a sort of happy accident, an act that isn’t under your conscious control but under the control of something much deeper inside you and art is the only way to access it. And once you access it and once you find yourself in that state, there’s no going back.