The Role of the Artist Empath

                                                                            

It is ten years since Other Likely Stories, my first collection of short stories, was published. For the last several years, I've been working, on and off, on a new collection of short stories, which from the very beginning I had named Crossing the Line.  This is because, from the very beginning, I thought of these stories as character studies of individuals who, at moments of crisis in their lives, went too far in one way or another, driven by emotions like despair, anger, sorrow, fear. They were all individuals who "crossed the line" in ways that made it impossible for them to return to the identities or the lives they knew before, whether they realized it or not.  These are often the characters who appear in my stories; I believe they know that they will get a fair telling. 

In "Beverly At The Fair," we meet an emotionally shattered ex-wife who, in an episode of truly bizarre behavior, will send confusion and fear through both the young wife who replaced her, and her own adult children.  "The Tree on Quarry Street" introduces us to former C-suite executive who has lost everything - his profession, his status, his wealth, his family - whose question is "How do I learn to want to go on living?" In "Party of One," a young married man finds that all the promises of his society have been broken.  He's suffocated by student loan debt and miserable low wage jobs.  His marriage is failing. He has lost hope, and has to find ways to make new promises to himself and his loved ones.  There is a high school senior, in "Do It Yourself Finishing School," who develops an obsession with Jacqueline Kennedy as an antidote to the vulgarities of life....an obsession that goes too far. In "Balayage," we follow a day in the life of a wealthy woman, whose confidence and security in herself and her worldview are shaken when she gets pulled into a parallel world of mental illness, social cruelty and despair. In as yet unnamed story, there is an elderly home-ec teacher facing the forces of change which have rendered her values and her contributions to her community obsolete.  In "Lena Goes West of Everything," we meet an emotionally damaged young wife who escapes a mental health facility, steals the urn containing her son's ashes, and drives cross country to the Nevada desert. 

What I realized is that every one of these stories has its start in a moment of profound loss.  So often, we are driven to extremes in moments of despair and grief. Each character experiences a different kind of loss, and expresses grief through different sorts of actions.  But they are all outside of themselves; they've all crossed a threshold without a map, to a strange world in which they now struggle to find meaning.  I've felt for many years that my job as a writer isn't to create stories so much as it is to receive those stories and to present them to the world, with respect and a determination to honor the characters whose lives those stories reveal. But my realization today was that my job extends beyond that.  It is my job as an artist to discover the embers of light that exist in the lives, the hearts and minds of these characters, no matter how lost or insane or broken they might seem.  It may be that they have not found that light, and are presenting to me a story of darkness.  But my responsibility to both the characters and the readers is to act as a vessel in which these stories are received and the light of truth and hope discovered.  That doesn't mean that I impose anything onto or into the story.  It is more that I discover and attempt to reveal what is already there, even if it is the very smallest ember.  

Artists are empaths.  We absorb and carry a lot of despair.  The world in which we live gives us little guidance as to what we are meant to do with that despair.  It doesn't belong to us.  It's the despair of the world, expressed through our characters and their stories, or it is expressed on the canvas, or in the music, or the dance.  We live in a world where artists are expected to be "entrepreneurs" and sales people.  They are expected to market and promote and sell.  Whether or not they profit is considered the full measure of their effectiveness and value in the world.  But it's not possible to be a huckster and a high priest at the same time.  And the choice you make determines the way you live, give, and understand your role and responsibility as an artist.  The way I understand not only the work I have ahead of me with this collection of stories, but the work ahead of me with all my creative projects -- that understanding is now altered.  This understanding also informs the way I will expand and alter my work with other artists.  There are no guilds any more.  In their place there are universities, themselves fully corporatized, teaching "art" with a mercantile emphasis.  How to brand yourself, how to develop a platform. How to market your work.  Few, if any, are teaching the young artists of our world how to enter the spiritual journey of creativity.  That's the journey where we undertake and interact with the despair and the pain we absorb in a different way, where we guide our audience into the primordial truths we've uncovered. I've only just begun to glean what all of this means.  I may well spend the rest of my life exploring the depths of this challenge.  What I know at this moment is that I'm only at the very beginning of understanding an enormous truth.

Artwork: Seacrest Sunset by Decorum