Humble pie... not as good as it looked on the menu

Art’s a funny thing, you really shouldn’t take it too seriously.

You see, you can’t just pour your heart and soul into a serious project and not expect a few people to laugh at it. It comes with the territory. After all, there are 6 billion people in the world, so you have to take into account that there’s gonna be 6 billion different interpretations of something you’ve done or said.

Well, for a brief moment last week, I forgot that, and it made me very upset to find that someone didn’t understand the deep, complex, emotional point that I was trying to get across, and instead, laughed. I felt disgraced, embarrassed, incensed. “How dare they?”, I thought, pretending that I was the all-powerful creator of everything good, clever, and true, “How dare they think differently about something!”

I had become what I’d hoped never to become, an “Arteest”. Yes, it’s just as it sounds: An outrageous French pronunciation of the word “Artist”.

Now, I’ve been taught to think of myself as an artist in the sense that I create things, and through those things, I try my best to express Truth and Beauty and Goodness to the world, but never forgetting that it’s about the people. This, I believe, is what it means to be called an “Artist”, a noble title, no doubt.

An “Arteest”, on the other hand, has no regard for other people, only themselves. Their art is the only thing that matters in the world, and if they ever face the threat of being brought back to reality, they hide behind the veil of their art saying, “You just don’t understand me”, or if your interpretation differs from their own: “You just don’t get it.”

Shut up.

How did I get to that point? How did I let myself behave in such a way? I’d forgotten the most important thing: never make the art more important than the people you’ve created it for.

Once I realized this, it became clear that my “detractors” we not, in fact, laughing AT me, but WITH me. Though it was not what I intended, I had brought joy into other people’s lives through a story of my own, and if that isn’t a good enough reason to do what I do, then I have no business doing it.

I’ll leave you with a quote: “...for in this business of show, you must have the heart of an angel, and the hide, of an elephant”

Yes indeed... yes indeed.



[Life is a beautiful thing, as long as I hold a string. I’d be a silly so-and-so if I should ever let it go]