Writers workshops, conferences, editorial services…there are definitely enough activities out there to help a writer write, network, get onto a “platform” and published. The road to success is attainable. Maps and guidebooks are available for purchase. Attending a writers conference is like visiting a place of hope, where you can learn what’s hot in the industry, how to write a best seller and turn it into a money-making series, how to “connect” with fans and keep them, etc. The glory to be the next discovered talent is just a snap of the fingers away.
But the way of the artist goes on a different paradigm. The urge to create supersedes fame, recognition and money. Attractive and perhaps necessary as these elements are, they cannot replace the continuous need to explore, break through, find the voice within the voice that is the artist’s job.
They say today’s artists have to do everything to make it happen. It may very well be the case. Turning artists into businessmen, the world may not understand that artists are best when they are left to do what they do. But as artists, we must not forget.
I think the way of the artist is beautifully illustrated by William Butler Yeats’ poem, “An Irish Airman Foresees His Death.” From memory:
I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above.
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those I defend I do not love.
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor.
No likely end will bring them loss
Or make them happier than before.
Nor law nor duty bade me fight
Nor public men nor cheering crowds:
A lonely impulse of delight
Led to this tumult in the clouds.
I balanced all, brought all to mind.
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.
The way of the artist means to keep in contact with that “lonely impulse of delight” no matter what. To do so even if it means, as it did for Major Robert Gregory, the speaker of Yeats’ poem, your death. In another poem Yeats wrote, addressing death,
What if a laughing eye
Have looked into your face?
It is about to die.