MY WEEKLY BLOG<\/p>\n
CREATIVITY FOR ITS OWN SAKE<\/p>\n
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When I was in Amsterdam in the sixties, touring with my ballet
company, I visited the Van Gogh Museum. I walked from room to room, the pieces\u00a0were breathtaking, and I stopped at a self-portrait in which Van Gogh is\u00a0missing a slice of his ear. The mysterious story goes that after a terrible row\u00a0with his friend, Paul Gaughin, he sliced off a piece of his left ear, packaged\u00a0it up, gave it to a prostitute and was admitted to a mental hospital in Arles.\u00a0He died from a gunshot wound, possibly a suicide, about a year later.<\/p>\n
Van Gogh was considered a madman and a failure but he never stopped\u00a0painting. Before he died in 1980 at the age of 37, even when he was\u00a0institutionalized, he continued to paint. One of his final masterpieces, a\u00a0portrait of his doctor, Dr. Gachet, sold in auction in three minutes in 1990\u00a0for 82.5 million dollars. The tragic irony is that although Van Gogh painted thousands\u00a0of oils, drawing and sketches, he died a pauper. He sold a single painting\u00a0while he was alive so he never knew he was a great artist. He just needed to\u00a0paint.<\/p>\n
When I was in the museum, as I contemplated his self-portrait, I
kept thinking, What if he had gotten discouraged and stopped painting? We would\u00a0be missing some of the most masterful post-impressionist works that are now\u00a0admired and appreciated around the world. The teaching here is that no matter\u00a0what you or anyone else thinks of your creations, your art is worth doing for its\u00a0own sake. Whether it\u2019s writing, dancing which I did for all of my teenage life,
singing, painting composing or anything else (see my photo of a time gone by), it\u00a0all matters. There is no good or bad. There is just \u201cdoing.\u201d<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve been writing chapters of a book lately and I have no idea how
they fit together or what the theme is. I sometimes call it my \u201cunbook,\u201d since I\u00a0have no idea what it will become. I have no book deal, I don’t have a massive\u00a0following on social media and I can’t imagine who, if anyone, is ever going to\u00a0read what I\u2019m writing. Or if I want them to. But I keep writing. I am in no way\u00a0comparing myself to the masterful Vincent Van Gogh but I share his need to\u00a0create for the sake of creativity. If I go too long without writing, it feels\u00a0like I\u2019m gasping for breath. Like I need oxygen. I feel undernourished and
lonely with no direction or purpose. So I keep on writing even though my words\u00a0could easily languish in my hard drive, unseen and un-discussed, for a very\u00a0long time. Or maybe forever. It bothers me sometimes, I wonder what the hell I\u2019m\u00a0doing and if I\u2019m wasting my time, but I keep coming back to the truth that when\u00a0I write, I feel okay. When I don’t, I don\u2019t.<\/p>\n
We are all qualified to do our art, whatever it is, but we are not
qualified to critique it. It doesn’t have value because someone else admires it\u00a0or buys it. It isn’t a waste of time because no one compliments you or hires\u00a0you. It doesn\u2019t even matter what you think of it. Your work is a part of you\u00a0that hungers for expression. It has nothing to do with anyone else and it has\u00a0nothing to do with your abusive inner critic whose job it is to discourage you\u00a0and tell how shitty your creation is. Your artistic expression is your\u00a0lifeblood, your outlet to unburden your heart and speak your truth. My friend
Olympia Dukakis dedicated the latter part of her life to helping women end the\u00a0centuries-old silence that has suffocated our self-expression and our ability\u00a0to feel like we matter in the world. I honor her when I speak my mind and do\u00a0the artistic things that feed and nourish my soul.<\/p>\n
I encourage you to create what is in your heart with no regard for
the endgame. No judgments about worthiness of lack of worthiness. No rating it\u00a0on a scale of 1 to 10. It\u2019s about falling in love with the process. Your expression\u00a0exists for you and you alone and if someone else jumps on your bandwagon, it\u00a0feels good but it doesn\u2019t make your work more valuable. If someone critiques\u00a0your work negatively, that doesn\u2019t make it less valuable. Think about Van Gogh
as you create beauty for its own sake. What happens with it once you\u2019ve completed\u00a0it is none of your business.<\/p>\n
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MY WEEKLY BLOG CREATIVITY FOR ITS OWN SAKE \u00a0 When I was in Amsterdam in the sixties, touring with my balletcompany, I visited the Van Gogh Museum. I walked from room to room, the pieces\u00a0were breathtaking, and I stopped at a self-portrait in which Van Gogh is\u00a0missing a slice of his ear. The mysterious story […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":1925,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1926"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1926\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}