Why?
…
It’s been tormenting me for years.
Why do we do what we do?
What’s the meaning?
Is there any?
Why do I create?
Why do I have these uncontrollable impulses to pick up a pen and write lines?
Why did I spend hours creating things that failed?
Is this a curse?
If you're asking the same questions. Today, I'll try to answer them.
This post was created for those who feel like artists.
Those for whom injecting meaningless content into the internet seems like nonsense.
Those whose hearts are filled with passion when they share their creations.
This will be a long post.
Probably the longest I’ve ever done.
Bon voyage to the heart of my thoughts.
I’ve been writing for a long time now.
My creative process is a mystery.
I write.
Because I crave to write.
No part of the day is spared from inspiration. In the morning, in the middle of the night, when I’m working, when I’m talking to someone… Every stratum of my life seems to be contaminated by this need to transform a moment suspended in time into a few lines.
Cravings that are impossible to fight, obsessive, far more powerful than any addiction I’ve ever known. And… I’m not proud, but I must confess: I’m familiar with the demon of addiction. But when you submit to it, you know you’re submitting to a vice.
We can lie to everyone but ourselves. When I submit to the inspiration of art, I’m not ashamed. I don’t feel dirty. I even feel better. It’s a positive energy that’s poured out of me. I looked at the world and felt as if it had spoken to me.
This world never stops whispering things to me. I write whole pages and don’t even publish them. I have a scary pile of drafts on my desk. This year, I wrote a draft of a complete novel. I wrote several short stories. 100 pages of a novel that I hope to finish. Hundreds of blog posts that will probably never see the light of day.
I finish a lot of drafts but… I need to feel like it’s time to publish. As if there’s an order to things. There’s a time when the world breathes ideas into you, and another when you have to share them.
For a few weeks now, I’ve been having recurrences.
Readers telling me: “I needed to read this today.”
For the first time, it clicked.
You needed to read this today.
I needed to write it.
Weird. Two trains, hurtling at full speed along life’s paths, we meet, exchange a glance and get back on track. For a fleeting moment, we share something.
I’ve never been a spiritual being. I don’t believe in star alignments. Nor do I believe in a destiny exactly mapped out to take you from point A to point B.
I like to say: “I don’t manifest, I do the work.”
I like to believe that we can have an impact on our lives, and that we can engineer our luck. If everything was written from A to Z, this world would be profoundly unfair. Maybe it is, but I refuse to believe it.
At the same time, I observe, and the more I observe, the more I tell myself that everything in the universe is formidably ordered. It’s not about religion or trying to convince you of something: just sharing about what I feel.
For years, I’ve been writing in the morning, under the sun.
Have you ever taken the time to “feel” the sun? Its caress on your face. How it penetrates you. How you can feel its energy being transmitted to your body. Then in the evening, the stars. Why, when you look at them, you feel something. Calm and quiet.
I don’t know what your favorite smell is. Mine’s roses. When I smell a rose, everything stops. The fantastic thing about roses is that each one has a different intensity. Each rose is a discovery.
We humans need sleep. Night makes its appearance. Darkness, the noise stops, everything calms down.
Time enough to rest. Then the light slowly returns. Small animal noises rouse us from our dreams. The world doesn’t even insult us with a rude awakening. It loves us. Light colors to get you out of bed with tenderness.
Then offers you a sun to give you strength.
Feeling bad? Let’s get out in nature.
Feeling sick? Sea water is for you.
Need water? It falls from the sky.
Air? It’s all around us.
Everything seems to be in its perfect place. Created for us. And if everything in the universe seems to have a role. I can’t help thinking we’ve got one too.
I plunged into philosophy in search of answers.
In the real Stoic philosophy, not the one you see in the videos of these statue-headed guys. There are several interesting concepts.
According to the Stoics, the whole universe is interconnected and interdependent. “Pneuma”, a breath is at the origin of all life. Since this breath of life comes from the same source, we’re all connected and driven by the same life energy.
“We are the waves of the same sea, the leaves of the same tree, the flowers of the same garden”.
Seneca
From this, the Stoics deduce an interconnection between all beings. This is the concept of Sympatheia.
“All things are interwoven with one another; a sacred bond unites them; there is scarcely one thing that is isolated from another. Everything is coordinated, everything works together in giving form to the one universe.”
Marcus Aurelius
(One day I’ll write a long philosophical post about all my research into this concept, but today, it’s about art.)
If everything is interconnected and we all live in one big whole: what’s the role of the artist in all this?
Let me try…
The artist experiences the world and transmutes his senses into a vision.
Words, drawings, songs, sculptures…
Sometimes in ways no one understands, not even the artist.
He saw something.
It inspired him.
He did something.
From then on, he has no control over his work. Everyone who sees it will be able to find meaning in it according to their sensibility.
Just as you can find meaning in my words, or none at all.
Like one of my last posts, where I received the kindest of messages and the most horrible. Why did the words provoke joy in one and hatred in the other? Mystery.
Instead of looking for meaning on my own, maybe it’s in the feedback you get that you should be looking for.
If the artist loves to receive “I needed to read that.”
There are a few other compliments that brighten his heart and ears.
I keep them all, preciously, in a folder into which I plunge when my thoughts are dark.
“You put words to my feelings.”
It’s happened to me a few times, to feel something deep. And I find a song or a text. And this artist managed, like a magician, to explain EXACTLY what I was feeling. As if he had spied on my heart. He found words for my emotions that I didn’t understand. He validated the fact that I’m not weird, lonely or crazy. In the vastness, there’s finally someone who understands me. The artist helps me feel less alone.
“I feel like you’re inside my head.”
Again, the artist is validating emotions, and it’s great to have someone who understands the intricacies of your mind.
“I feel seen.”
The feeling of invisibilization that society would have us believe. We feel things, and nobody seems to feel them. It’s an excluding feeling to be an anomaly in this great whole.
“You allowed me to reconnect with something.”
The artist will dig deep within himself and try to heal old wounds. In doing so, he allows others to do the same.
“I could have written that.”
Once again, the artist’s ability to be in sync with a stranger, with a twist. No, no one else could have written this.
And that’s one of the fundamental points that needs to be made to understand the very essence of art.
While artists roam the earth with disastrous self-esteem. When they are plagued by existential crises and even come to think that their art is “useless”. They don’t realize that they’re capable of something unique.
Expressing the feelings of those who can’t.
No, you can’t wake up one morning and make art. Many of them are the result of events in a person’s life. And it’s the encounter between all these events and one’s vision of the world that gives birth to something new.
Cormac McCarthy wrote “The Road”. Surely one of the most beautiful novels ever written about the bond between a father and a son. Where does the genesis come from? He had a son. He wanted to write about this feeling.
When Montaigne wrote the essays. He had lost someone before. He locked himself in a tower for years and let his heart weep and speak.
And how many artists can no longer produce anything at a given moment? They’ve been doing their art for years and then, all of a sudden, nothing. They’re no longer inspired. The fire vanished. What they’re doing doesn’t make their hearts beat anymore. They’ve gone from being experts to struggling beginners.
So no, no artist’s art is “easy” to produce.
It’s a part of him that he offers to the world.
Through his art, he helps everyone to better understand the world. He translates the world for others. The artist doesn’t even realize how precious he is. He doesn’t understand that his vision of the world is unique and that its expression exists nowhere else.
He paints the world in a unique hue that will never be repainted in the same way. The artist’s art is a color that has never existed. A shade of the world that wouldn’t exist without him.
The artist is another kind of doctor.
Some heal the body.
He heals what we can’t see or understand.
When your body is in pain.
You need a doctor.
When your soul aches.
You read books, listen to songs, watch movies…
Artists process the emotions of the world.
Without them, the world would collapse in a matter of days.
Some will read my words and understand.
Others will think I’m an arrogant dude who thinks he’s more useful than he is. That’s the game when you write what you think.
It reminds me of a quote, it was something like: “He who doesn’t understand art feels humiliated. Because one of the nuances of the world seems to escape him. And it’s unbearable that he doesn’t understand what seems obvious to others.”
There’s no need to hate me. I too was one of those who was completely untouched by any form of art. Painting seemed to have no relief. Writing seemed superficial. And I too thought that some artists were arrogant douche.
Then life happened to me. And it was other people’s art that saved me. What I always thought was useless was what was most useful to me. What I thought I’d never need was what I needed most. I was finally able to see what I’d never seen before.
Even today, I don’t understand certain visions. I find some art strange. But now I understand that I don’t have to understand them. They’re not meant for me and will surely find the souls who are meant to receive the message.
The meaning of art is found when nothing else can soothe us.
To you who are artists.
Open your ears wide.
I need to tell you something.
Many of you have doubts.
Many of you seem to have no impact.
Many of you are suffering.
You seem cursed.
Why isn’t what seems to be your life’s calling an industry where money streams in?
Why is the world whispering messages to you?
Why do you furiously want to express yourself?
Why can’t anyone understand the colors you paint?
It’s exhausting. Spending hours creating things that few people appreciate. Prisoner to your inspiration.
And the most unfair part is that maybe what you've produced will make sense when you're no longer around.
This is where we need to detach the spiritual from the real. The reality is that fantastically talented artists are dying in complete anonymity. There’s no more thankless role than that.
How many artists who produced incredible works have died in complete anonymity?
The list is endless. But why? Because they didn’t work for their time. They weren’t trying to create something commercial. They were following the whispers that entered their hearts. They saw what others didn’t. And for many, it took years, even generations, for their thinking to emerge as obvious.
Few years ago, I read “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”. This is one of the most confusing books I’ve ever read. A mysterious philosophical message delivered with raw poetic power.
Reading a biography of Nietzsche, I discovered that the book had been a commercial failure. Heavily criticized on its release. Nietzsche believed in it so much that he financed it himself.
His thought took a hundred years to flood the world. In recent years, his philosophy has been everywhere. The Ubermensch is reflected in the echoes of our times.
It’s a fate shared in part by Lovecraft, who at one point experienced so many failed attempts that he considered himself a complete failure. The man who changed the paradigm of horror stories was riddled with mortal doubts about his art.
Dive into other’s stories and you’ll see that these souls are legion. Succeeding in their work, failing in their lives.
Jack London wrote Martin Eden to describe his disgust at the way the world treats an artist. Van Gogh felt like a burden to his family…
They lived the tragedy of seeking art, beauty and truth, not money.
And you don’t have to go back too far to find surprising stories.
Recently, Nightcall became the most sought-after music in the world. Because of a performance at the closing ceremony of the Olympic Games.
But the irony is… this music is old. When it was released… it went almost unnoticed. In an interview, the author even said he was “going to give up music” after its failure.
But one day, the director of Drive heard the song and bought the rights. He loved it so much that he put it right in the intro.
The movie is a success. The song takes on a new dimension. A decade later, it finds itself at the Olympic Games. Why? Because Kavinsky is French.
If the Olympics weren’t in Paris… the song wouldn’t have been played to millions of eyes.
What makes an interplanetary success?
Sometimes, not much.
The right person who finds your work.
The stars that decide your country will host a major event.
Was this music less good when it was released?
It was the same. The same notes. The same sound.
Not so long ago, nobody wanted to listen to this song.
Now, everyone wants to hear it.
The success of a work does not correlate with its quality.
Brutal law of the art world that we’ll have to learn to live with.
There are two ways of making art.
Compromise your vision and do something commercial.
Negotiate nothing and let the raw voices in your heart speak for themselves.
Commercial works can feed you, but they often die with the times.
Works from the heart may make you starve, but they can become universal and transgenerational.
Could the price of immortality be the price of our lives?
Let’s be reasonable.
You’ll think I’m an advocate of going all out and letting our work consume us. Which isn’t true, I’m just describing a situation. And a philosophical approach to the union of an artist’s life and his real life. Finding the right balance between producing your art and surviving this world. I’m just looking for solutions to problems that seem to have none.
Do you want to make art for a long time? Get organized. Work hard. Put up with this 2-job life as best you can.
I like Jack London’s advice: “Don’t all in if you have people who are dependent on you.”
It will be hard but maybe. The pain will inspire some great works.
I’ve chosen to make money, but for the moment, not in art. Because I need far less effort in my life to make money.
Having two jobs is exhausting. One tires me physically, the other psychologically, but I have no choice.
This world sometimes seems unfair.
In fact, unfair is the wrong word.
The world is just broken. Instead of redistributing wealth in a kind of fairness, since there’s plenty for everyone. Our system capitalizes and absorbs wealth in a pyramidal fashion, with those at the top lacking nothing and those at the bottom lacking everything. Those at the bottom are the most numerous, and everyone finds the situation perfect and normal.
Mark my words.
Capitalism is doomed to collapse.
It’s a system of predation, extracting human life forces on a massive scale for the profit of a few. Precious years of life are stolen from you under the pretext of a brutal social organization masking the truth: the exploitation of all by few.
Years when you could have channeled your life force into doing fantastic things. But you had to waste your life earning it by exchanging it for repetitive, boring, unstimulating and uncreative tasks.
The status quo has been made possible for decades by the nurturing of a lie: “Work hard and you’ll escape your condition.”
But today’s world is realizing every day that this is a lie. You give your all and the elevator is stuck on the ground floor. And the stairs that separate you from the second floor are miles away.
You work your soul out and can't even buy a house without going generations into debt. What kind of joke is this?
This system will show its true face with the democratization of AI. All the jobs that can be replaced will be replaced because capitalism was never intended to produce happy employees, but productive ones.
Diplomas in which many souls have spent years will be obsolete.
We will finally be able to look the monster in the eye.
I’m hopeful that this will bring about a spiritual awakening. A paradigm shift like many human organizations have had before us. A collective realization that our lives are a whole.
I dream of a world where people can do what moves their hearts. Whether it's art or anything else. Because when humans do the things they love, they gain access to layers of their consciousness that allow their genius to express itself.
And it's this human genius that's far too precious to be wasted.
We can’t spend our lives doing things we hate for people we don’t like.
We deserve better than this.
I’m caricaturing, but nobody, on their deathbed, is going to dream about all the Excel sheets they’ve filled in. My bet is even that when the agony shows its face, we’ll say to ourselves: “How could I have used such precious time for this worthless thing.”
Life has to have an integral approach.
But we’ll get to that on another post.
I know it’s not that simple. I’m writing these lines and I’m late. I’ve got to get to work.
A job I have to do because I need to eat. Luckily, I’m also an artist in this one. Even though it’s not my passion, I tell myself it could have been worse.
One day I’d like to devote myself to writing, but not just writing. Deepen my piano skills, draw, enjoy the world and the people I love.
Aware of this, I’m gritting my teeth and working hard to be free in a few years’ time.
Why did I write you all this?
Life is good to me. My writing is progressing well. I’m being read, shared. I get lots of nice comments and emails. I’m confident that I’m not far from writing the piece that will send me to Valhalla.
But at the same time, I don’t forget where I come from. I can’t forget all the times I almost gave up because it was an endless desert. The number of times I told myself that it all made no sense. And today I see some awesome artists who are exactly where I was.
Doubting themselves, their abilities and their usefulness.
Broken and crushed by a world that is unfair.
A world that doesn’t see them.
A world that makes them invisible.
Worse, sometimes tells them they’re useless.
When the world wins. When these artists stop producing. Because they're tired. Tired of shouting into the void. A voice dies forever. And I feel like we're all losing.
The victory of cynicism.
The defeat of what animates our humanity.
A piece of genius that could have brought more to everyone.
I see incredible artists producing beautiful work with a handful of views and a few likes. This is so unfair. That’s why I try to share their work. Because I can see the passion they put into it.
You want beauty.
The feeds of all the apps inundate them with mediocrity.
You want to create something meaningful.
Most viral content is consumed and forgotten.
So you doubt.
Why is this world so different from what I am?
And from this feeling comes loneliness.
If you feel this way, it’s for you that I’ve written these words.
I needed to write them.
All I have left to hope is that you needed to read them.
If you like what i write.
Share it with the people you love.
Thank you.
If I could describe your writing in one word it’d probably be “likable” and not in that shallow way where you are trying to be likable, just in that genuine way when you see a human being beautifully human you can’t help but like them. I can see why you are doing well here and it gives me hope for myself.
I’m not sure if AI will solve everything but if we really zoom out, we haven’t event begun to feel the impact of just basic communication on the internet. I think a lot of the negative impact of social media is just growing pains, us not knowing how to interface with something completely foreign to all of our ancestors, and we are slowly starting to figure out healthy ways to use it.
At the platform I started at I made friends with a bunch of Nigerians and Ghanaians who completely changed how I see Africa and the world. I think a lot of the issues come from the centralization of power and attention. As both become more decentralized (the global south gains access to information and resources, we can share our ideas with the world as easily as clicking “publish”), and we can connect directly and create communities based on values rather than tribe or religion, energy will begin to flow much easier to those who do the work to contribute to something (anything), even if they insist on doing the work on their own terms.
Viam, thank you so much for being an advocate of writing and writers. Please always envelope us aspiring writers with your words of encouragement. We really need it. I feel protected with it. I see you in the notes section often and to me it feels like having a warm presence of a friend on Substack. You encourage me to write and represent my self. And I do hope that you get a million followers and publish your Valhalla piece. Lots of praise, I pray. And please update us about your daughter's candy kingdom!
I never really thought that I could write and make art until I went on a career break to find my passion. And then I just found my self choosing to write because the moment chose me, too. Sometimes it feels like the words want to publish themselves. I am happy with the abundance of words but it could also get overwhelming. What am I to do with them? I never really pursued becoming a writer and now I find my self with lots of words. Regardless of my struggles I am still super thankful. Writing makes me feel alive. I take responsibility for the words that I write and hopefully I find a way make sense of my outputs.
Thank you thank you