I would like to share with you my thoughts on art and artists. Art is what people live for. It liberates us from our perennial delusion to notice the ego. It releases the beauty and majesty of the moment. It transcends time and space so that an instant of pure experience is already victory over all the forces of illusion. Doing art is an act of creation, of giving, of birth, of liberation in the natural order of the universe. To perform art, one must be pregnant with its thought, pained with its experience, nurtured by its magic, and obsessed with its realization! This is why artists are often erratic, moody, and unpredictable. Because they are vessels of the divine wracked in delirious creativity, contorted by the sacred breath of creation until form and flesh arises that would remind humanity of his/her original nature. Artists have a deeper perception of reality. Their experience with life is a religious experience that touches deep into their fertile souls. They do not just go around the surface but dive within the depths. They suck the marrow out of life and beg the gods for more. They unite with the sun, the moon, the mountains, and the seas in a chemical bonding. They see astounding wholes as well as sympathetic parts. They are impelled by a deeper force to break the chain of original sin, of killing selfishness, of blindness to revelation, of inward looking existence. That is why true artists are never content. They are often hounded by emptiness. They feel a vacuum within themselves- an emptiness from which all form arises in the universe. It is the vacuum that drives us beyond ourselves–the killing silence that paves the way for meaning. Artists continuously urge us to be free from our hundrum lives because they, in their art, are the ones who really live. They are slaves of light and shadow, of depression and exultancy, of anxiety and joy, of life and death. Their passion often leads to their own burning and death but all the world’s greatness and the summary of its achievements can only be attributed and dedicated to them.
