goes well with old favorite an artist's life manifesto by marina abramović

by heather havrilesky

• believe in what you are and what you have.
  • approach your preexisting affinities and strengths with an almost religious fervor and passion. whatever makes you a tiny bit different, whatever feels a bit easier for you than for other people, whatever you enjoy a little more — maybe even enjoy so much that it embarrasses you? that’s the stuff you have to take the most seriously, treat with the most care, and protect from a world packed with people who want to tell you those things make you weird or boring or unimportant or a misfit. living like an artist is all about standing up for whatever you have, even when it looks like a can full of old rubber bands and three rusty nails to you. someone might’ve told you that stuff was junk, but it’s not. it’s precious and important.
• cultivate curiosity about the truth, no matter how ugly it is.
  • this is what makes art so soothing and also so exciting: instead of feeling afraid of who you really are or who other people really are or how terrifyingly bad the whole world is, you can move toward the things you fear the most and gather information about them.
• stop doing battle with yourself and welcome whatever comes up every day.
• become what you fear.
• welcome uninvited guests into your heart and mind.
  • that means that even when you wake up feeling irritable and you can’t work on the project you were sure was everything just the day before, you allow that frustration to crawl into a soft bed in your mind’s guest room and take a little nap. [...] let this unruly crowd trash your house. don’t tell them to leave. don’t tell them to change. because once the entire house is a wreck, you’ll start straightening up, feeling shitty all the while, and joy will wander in. i don’t know what joy sounds like to you, but joy tells me this: you’re exactly where you need to be. thank you for following the devastating, scary clues that led you here. thank you for feeling this magic across your skin, behind your eyes, inside the cage of your teeth. trusting this path is your whole job. you don’t need to get anywhere. this is enough.
• study other artists.
  • observe how they thought about themselves, how they nurtured their talents, how they moved through the world and talked to others about their work and the joy it brought them. understanding how fiercely an artist protects their worldview and their process and their identity, and how passionately they speak about what they do, will help you. it will even help you to notice how goddamn basic most of their ideas are.
• pursue joy at all costs.