It sure seems like a sacrifice to live the artistic mind in this age. How can one keep from going mad? It takes a great deal of trial and error and learning how to be in imagination… to be a lion tamer and a lamb. to be socially simple and to be radically recalcitrant.
given talent, imagination, youthful wonder, emotion, and memory of innocence; one still has to be courageous enough to go! …. to abide like the Jack Rabbit and the Turtle. to tread way beyond the comfort of one’s own pleasures and pains into a life of imagination where each frame of one’s vision is potential… each frame, a photo, where each image can be or has the potential to be scene with the beauty of the divine. Wherein the illusion is obvious and evermore that more beautiful. That more delicious.
Philosophers, Kings, Poets, Mystics, they visit these realms; discuss these topics; live in this environment (perhaps). But the artist, the artist creates in this realm; creates with the very power of God the Creator … in as much as the scene he impregnates, this scene is his and God’s.
The artist (in my opinion) transcends all “visionaries” … his life is reflection. Every hue and line, every shape and object has potential to be just as it is, with sight alone, a masterpiece. For the artist lives in his masterpiece. These are the risks the rock star artist takes. These are the risks of soul and sanity that a person who calls themselves an artist has the potential to undertake. And if the artist choose not these risks, he is doomed to a life of mediocrity and distraction. Which is why artists starve, have emotional issues, mood disorders and the like. It is a consequence of denial of one’s true identity ..