I’m Afraid to Disappear

I sometimes think I’m a philosopher. I can spend hours in my head or in my journal, tracking down the answers to my life problems. I seek out advice from books, from friends, from articles, from God. I want to find the best way I can be living.

I recently read a book called Culture Making. This was one of my favorite quotes. It hit me right in the gut:

“The academic fallacy is that once you have understood something – analyzed and critiqued it – you have changed it.”

I think this is a dangerous world that we can live in. As an artist I like to study and learn and explore things around me. This is all well and good, unless the studying and learning and exploring is keeping me from actually doing anything with that information.

Just because I read something and it resonates with me doesn’t mean I’ve implemented it in my life. And if it’s not being implemented then, in a sense, I’m just getting “fat” on knowledge. Knowledge is puffing me up.

A year and a half ago I sought out some advice from a few artists. I was in the middle of a career shift, and I needed some guidance. I contacted artists that I looked up to, artists that were in the throws of successful careers and seemingly living out their art as a part of their life. I remember before I called them, Tony said to me, “Make sure you have something to ask them. I mean, you don’t want to be wasting their time. Make sure you come up with some good quality questions.”

What I realized at that moment was that I didn’t have anything specific I wanted to ask them. What I wanted from them was their magic bullet. The easy answer. Tell me, “How can you make me to be like you?”

Silly? You bet. But it’s so easy to live like this. To look at someone else’s success and think I need to study them, read what they read, go where they went, and once I figure them out, then I will have arrived.

Nope.

I get frustrated with the blogs of artists who do more philosophizing than creating. My own blog defaults to this sometimes. It’s the empty talk of knowing what you need to do, and thinking your knowledge means that you’re doing it. I want to say to these artists (myself included at times) would you stop talking about what needs to be done and just do it already.

Here’s something else I’ve noticed about artists that are really doing something. They disappear. Some disappear for days. In the internet world, days can seem like weeks. Other artists, who create on a larger scale may disappear for months. You wonder, will they ever release a new book, a new painting, a new piece of music? Or sometimes, you even forget about them completely.

But they almost always re-emerge. And the brilliance of their creation clues you into the justified magnificence of their silence.

So my question is, am I too afraid to disappear? If I always have to be sure people are liking me and noticing me and not forgetting about me, (as this article so brilliantly suggests) then I’ll constantly be talking. I’ll be sharing the newest greatest thing I’ve been learning, but really never being brave enough to make the necessary investment of time that implementation requires.

I’ve talked before on my blog about struggling with what people think of me. I think part of that is this fear to disappear. I’m afraid I’ll offend someone because I haven’t been readily available to them. I’m afraid I’ll be forgotten. I’m afraid I’ll “look” like I’m not doing anything (and heaven forbid you should think I’m lazy.) I’m also afraid of spending time on something that could flop. The IMPERFECTion of my own art and life-change scares me. Do I really want to disappear and use my time to create a flop? Wouldn’t I rather have the appearance of creating and changing so as to maintain my image.

The deeper I get into my motives behind things, the uglier things get. But I’m so thankful I keep finding the strength (thanks to God and some rockin’ friends) to keep going deeper anyway.

Off to contemplate the possibilities of my impending disappearance.