The Artist Within Me
Photograph by Gursimrat Ganda
I regret that I have turned artists into my heroes at various points in my life. I’ve always done that with actors. But then started doing it with writers, musicians, and stand-up comedians too. It started with Shahrukh Khan. Perfect boyfriend, perfect lover, perfect son, perfect father. I send out a prayer every day that he not be accused of sexual assault.
Really, this turning of the artist into a hero extends to any individual within whom creativity and fame meet each other. In a flash, the artist becomes the mouthpiece of an entire culture. And then just as easily as I glorify the artist, do I then demean them, vilify them, and knock them off that pedestal. On which I put them. Needless to say, I never really see them for who they are. I see them only as a representation of my hopes, my desires, my fantasies. And when they for a moment stop representing them, when they for a moment slip up, I quickly tear them down. “Those are my hopes, desires, and fantasies that you’re messing around with, you asshole, I cannot allow you to do that”.
And I think that speaks to how I have treated the artist within me. The artist within me as well, hangs by a slender thread. I remember the messages he received when I was a teenager, languishing in school, trying so hard to wrest just two hours every week from Math and Science to go to theatre classes or practice a play with my classmates. “As long as you don’t waste too much time on it! As long as it doesn’t interfere with your studies! As long as you win a prize! As long as you’re good at it!”. Christ, it’s a play for a fucking school assembly! Leave us kids alone!
My creativity was always contingent upon it being channelled in a way that brought me validation and adulation. Which is why I never took up art forms indiscriminately. No, only the art forms at which I was immediately good, and immediately competent. Which essentially ruled out any room for trying, for learning, for failing, for exploration. And more importantly, for just doing something for the sake of it. Without an agenda.
I tied creativity to being skillful, and good, and I gathered that it was to be aimed only towards public consumption and appreciation. Which sounded fucking exhausting. And so, the artist within me shrunk back in fear. “Oh I thought we were just having some fun here. I didn’t know you were going to take this so seriously”. And I grew up, believing that creativity really has no place in the adult world. Believing that what’s more important is work, and money and safety. And if creativity cannot lead me to that holy trifecta, then it really is no good. What a genius I was. With that belief I essentially condemned myself and the majority of humanity to an existence devoid of creativity.
Which is why I’m so critical and exacting of any creativity that I come across. And I think I measure the worth of artists against these insane standards of excellence because that’s what I hold the artist within myself to. The implication thus is that if the artist within someone else does show up, then they had better be damn good. Because what right does your artist have to show up, while my own artist cowers in a corner.
And at least the way I have seen it, the respectable artist doesn’t just create art. No, they must create good art. Today, the artist’s art needs to have some sort of moral, ethical, social responsibility. If your art isn’t uprooting power structures, then I’m sorry, it’s too low-brow. It’s too frivolous.
Why the fuck can’t I be frivolous. Why am I turning my only hope of spontaneity into something serious? Isn’t the world serious enough? I’m so scared and bitter, aren’t I. Because the world and its institutions and its supposed saviours have failed us so miserably. And I want someone to come in and fix this. And I have put that responsibility of being saved on the artist. The activist artist or the philosopher artist is one of my most revered figures. The one who straddles creativity and societal responsibility.
When that’s the fucking standard, no wonder the artist within me is so scared to come out. The artist within me then has to make some sort of a point. But there is no point to creativity. Creativity needs no point. I direct my need for a hero to the artist outside of me, because the artist within me has no hope of being a hero. But maybe he doesn’t need to be a hero. Maybe he just needs to be my hero. My hero, simply because he likes to have so much fun. And that’s a pretty heroic thing to do. To have fun.
