RMiddleton

My boyfriend asked:

Tough question. When does life and experiences become a higher priority than art creation, and when does art creation become a higher priority than life and experiences?

He keeps a journal when we are apart. We have a long distance relationship that's getting longer. I'm not sure when we next see each other. He journals amazingly, recapping his experiences and feelings about them; sharing his creations; and posing meaningful questions to himself, to me, to all of us. And I am in pain. I feel moved by what he says and unable to reply meaningfully:

my answer to this could be long. I will try to write it soon, maybe as a blog.

And here I am, trying.

Binary thinking is seductive, easy to fall into. It's a trap. The answer cannot be that either art or living is the top priority. Right? But those are words. Talking and making it so are vastly different.

Aside: I'm sad about the word performative because I've learned that until it's recent popularity it meant something else. A rare usage, performative meant making it so — as in, “I now pronounce you wife & wife.” The words are performative. They exist and they perform a function. Now performative means the opposite, devoid of meaning, for performance. With the loss of this word I feel I have one less tool to make words into reality. I realize that can't make sense; it's just vocabulary. Then again that's what I'm talking about, the relationship of words to reality.

Sigh. Why can't I be brief? Let me go back:

When does one become the priority: living or creating art?

I don't enjoy living without creating. And obviously I cannot create if I am not alive. The two are hand in hand. The two may be the same to me. I'm a “bad choice” of person to answer this question because compared to many I am not living. I do very little every day. I do not earn a living. I'm isolated from most people I've ever known. Sigh. I type sigh now. And mean it. That's now a thing I do.

Let me try to simplify: At times I can take photos of anything and it feels like art. I could capture every moment — and not just photographically but why not the audio too? I could write the scenes and paint them! Every moment can be recorded. Think about all the shared photos of meals. My most recent text to my boyfriend is:

I made a beefy cheesy stir fry. No pic.

It almost feels like a big missed opportunity not to take a photo of a good meal, because the phones make it so easy. The implication may be there's no record of the event because I was busy living. That may be a point of conflict between living and art, taking the time to memorialize. Stories have long bothered me because they are all lies. In some sense a story must be incomplete. It is edited for time. It cannot take place from every point of view. It could take a lifetime to accurately understand one moment.

Here is where interaction is key, and the limitations of living as a solitary artist. Other people provide a form of constraint or direction. For example, I'm not happy with this answer and think it would be better as a conversation.

Still I have learned something important by writing this attempted answer: I don't have to answer any questions! Schooling, or wanting to appear smart, or just being a thinking being inspires me to attempt to answer every question that's posed to me. And if I'm going to produce an answer I want it to sound correct! In doing so I'm deviating from a core belief that there are no right answers. Since my words aren't performative (old sense) I find that I must restate that core belief over and over as I try to absorb it. My words — these words — pile up and get in the way as I continue to not answer! All I have any right to say is:

I don't know.

Discussing it is what makes it interesting to me. I don't think I'll ever know.