An Artist's Travail

It is a strange phenomenon, this thing they call art. It is demanding and yet supremely rewarding; you cannot live without it and yet sometimes you can't stand to try again, to keep moving forward. It is a siren, promising, alluring, always staying just ahead and beckoning you on with the beauty of its own being, a beauty that is so keen and piercing at times it feels as though it will slay you...and then just when you have tasted a little of it, it skips ahead again and you are chasing once more, not because you want to but because to do anything else would be the death of your soul. It tyrannizes mercilessly, forcing you to spend hours on end laboring so hard that you would think it would drain your life force, and yet, when asked why you do all this, when you ask yourself why you do this thing that is so difficult, and that so often leaves your heart raw where no one can see it, you answer 'why wouldn't I do this? how could I not give expression to the beauty and the vision that fills my mind and colors the universe in breathtaking splendor? to not do so would be to cease to exist.' And then you see it, the thing that makes you willing to undergo so much hardship and internal anguish---the vision you have for so long incubated, that you have agonized over and poured out your soul for, sitting there before your eyes in all its imperfection, and even though it is not, it WILL NOT ever be perfect, you love it and know it for the piece of you that it is, and you heart is light and buoyant once more, and all the world glows with the golden sheen of a perfect sunset. It is a strange phenomenon, the act of creation, and only one who feels its tug will ever fully understand the nature of it, demanding and yet subservient, silent and yet unrelenting in its voice, maddening and yet beautiful beyond belief. And you know, deep down, that you will never part with it.