Searching for Light

Those who are paid only to entertain have from the great spectacle chosen to abstain. The job of an artist is not to succumb to despair, but to find beauty and meaning almost anywhere. So long exploring the mosaic of experience is not a crime, anything prosaic can be made sublime. There is so much an artist can hope to achieve when his audience he does not deceive, a redeeming light can always be found, even if darkness all seems to surround. If the truth is out of reach, the price of experience one must pay, though the past has much to teach, from the present never stray. Beauty provides hope that greater meaning can be found, helping us to cope when life´s problems do abound, but if escapism is all one seeks, reality should be entertained, the present for which one speaks demands to be explained. The emptiness of existence, some profess so well to know, is merely a measure of the distance from all that lies below. An artist must not despair that finding the truth is the greatest lie, though beauty and meaning may seem rare, a man must learn to live before he dies. Of the human race he is a member entitled to have his say, but the artist must remember there is a reason so many pray: a character he remains in the greatest story ever told, bound by the same chains if merely enticed by gold. Sacrifices made so he could find his voice should leave him unafraid to defend his final choice: in a world that preaches silence, as a cure for so much pain, the artist stands in defiance of those who conform only in vain. Great sensibility is required... to understand what true words can convey, an artist should always be inspired... to command the blinding light of his day!

Obs: This is my response to what Gertrude Stein once had to say while trying to help a writer who had seemingly lost his way. In one scene of the movie "Midnight in Paris", she advises that "An artist´s job is not to succumb to despair, but to find an antidote to the emptiness of existence."