The True Artist

The True Artist by Norman Bethume

The true artist lets himself go. He is natural. He swims easily in the stream of his own temperament. He listens to himself. He respects himself.

He comes into the light of every-day like a great leviathan of the deep, breaking the smooth surface of accepted things, gay, serious, sportive. His appetite for life is enormous. He enters eagerly into the life of man, all men. He becomes all men in himself.

The function of the artist is to disturb. His duty is to arouse the sleepers, to shake the complacent pillars of the world. He reminds the world of its dark ancestry, shows the world its present, and points the way to its new birth. He is at once the product and preceptor of his time. After his passage, we are troubled and made unsure of our too-easily-accepted realities. He makes uneasy the static, the set and the still. In a world terrified of change, he preaches revolution -- the principle of life. He is an agitator, a disturber of the peace -- quick, impatient, positive, restless and disquieting. He is the creative spirit working in the soul of man.

I came across this a few days ago. Thought it's rather interesting and thought-provoking.

I thought the first paragraph is precisely about being authentic, something I wrote about yesterday.

At first look, it is an exaltation of the the artist. However, I think there is much here that we can inspire ourselves to strive for. Not so much as trying to be the true artist who changes the world, but rather, to arouse ourselves from our slumber and complacency -- instead of waiting for the passage of a true artist.