When I was 15 or so, I was pretty into studying French. I had this fantasy about going to Paris. I wanted to sit at a café table and read Camus. I wanted to be mistaken for Jean-Paul Belmondo. So I put in a lot of time learning irregular verbs and memorizing vocabulary lists.
It was hard work, but I pushed myself, and the summer before junior year, I got to travel alone to France and live with a family in the Loire Valley and polish my parlez vous. I even went to Paris, sat in the front row of the Moulin Rouge, and ordered a tall glass of underage champagne.
Unlike a normal American boy, I never took Driver’s Ed in high school.
I couldn’t be bothered to take lessons until I was out of college and had a girlfriend who didn’t think it was cute that I didn’t have a car. So I bought a 1965 Ford Fairlane for $800 and practiced parking in the Safeway lot. It was hard work, but I pushed myself and after a few attempts finally passed my road test and could make out in the backseat.
In high school, I used to do a fair amount of doodling in the margins of my notebooks. I drew cartoon faces and filled pages with spirals and checkerboards and shaded cubes. Then a friend showed me the beautiful sketchbooks of Frank Frazetta and Robert Crumb and Burne Hogarth, and I decided it was time to learn to actually draw properly. It was hard work but I pushed myself because I really wanted to draw like they did and possibly wow my friends.
There are all kinds of reasons we first pick up skills.
But there comes a point when we need something deeper. When we’ve mastered the essentials and are finally ready to really see where they can take us. Often these goals are far more important than where we started, and identifying them keeps us going.
In time, I could say whatever was on my mind in French without stopping to wrestle with the declensions and irregular verbs. I kept on getting more comfortable behind the wheel till I could drive anywhere while talking on the phone, doing a crossword, and plucking my nose hairs. I’ve driven back and forth across the continent, no longer to impress a girl but just to see what’s out there, to push further toward the unknown, to seek adventure and new horizons.
I’ve found the same unselfconscious transcendence with art. I don’t draw all the time just to improve my skills or to look cool in front of pimply pubescents.
I do it because it helps give my life meaning. The more my skills advance, the further I can take them and learn new things about the world and me.
It’s not easy to get past the self-conscious stage of learning a new skill. It can be hard work, and we need to push ourselves hard. The force behind that push is the bigger goal you set yourself.
You have to ask yourself questions. Why do you really want to learn this? What could you do with it? Where could you take it?
The basics, the requirements of schooling, are no longer the point. Now you have a glowing horizon to head towards, now you have things you want to say, and now you finally have the confidence to say them.
Becoming an artist is a lifelong journey, strewn with pitfalls and struggles and unexpected delights. It’s important to find your reason to give you the stick-to-itiveness to slog through the hard work and on into the mist, trusting your purpose and the value of your quest.
This can prove tough. The monkey will mutter that this is a waste of time or that I won’t be able to do it and should just quit instead.
But when I know my why and start to wade towards it, art gives me deep satisfaction, makes my life richer, and every day matter.
A bientôt,
Danny
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