Looks a lot like work
“Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.”
~ Pablo Picasso
Good morning and happy Monday!
It’s foggy and damp this morning. Looking out the window, it looks like I should get a sweater, warm up my coffee, and maybe put some socks on. But stepping outside, it’s actually like 73º and humid. Bummer.
Yesterday I sat down to make music, to work on one of my pieces. I added parts, took them away, added other parts, took them away. After about an hour of this I finally found something worth keeping that opened a doorway to the piece in a way I hadn’t expected. And I think I like it.
I’m telling you this to demonstrate that doing the work of an artist (and assuming you are human, you are most decidedly an artist) is just that - work. You show up, you try some stuff, and you like it or you don’t. The whole thing takes on a bit of a work-a-day hue, and loses a lot of the romantic luster that gathers around such things in our imagination.
I always imagined that if I could have somehow been a silent, invisible observer of Picasso as he worked in his studio, I would witness fire being drawn from the heavens. But the truth is that if we could magically drop in on him, we would probably see him simply looking, sketching, putting paint on canvas. We would see him trying things, hating them, trying other things—just like you and I do.
And maybe that’s what drawing fire from the heavens looks like—it looks a lot like working.
My very best,
Philip