literary granddaddy harold bloom once coined the term anxiety of influence — the fear of the author questioning his own meager shadow in the light of the great literary canon. feminist literary giants sandra gilbert and susan gubar then, in turn, coined the anxiety of authorship — the (female) writer’s fear that she cannot create, that writing will only isolate and consume her, since she can never inhabit a place in the great patriarchal literary canon to begin with. faced with the faces of great authors past, the writer (gender neutral) resorts to existential dread: how can one ever, in this short and shallow life, create anything that will survive the ephemeral?
these last few weeks i have been walking around with this dread in my pocket. nursing the overwhelming urge to catch the moment in ink, the flash of a camera, in vivid pigments. scared of loosing the memories not commemorated into art, i walk with the haunted knowledge that precious moments will one day fade into oblivion. to be looked back upon, at a distance — disjointed — as they unfold for me in the present moment, already glowing and sepia-toned.
this dread, this anxiety. this morning it made sense to me — and if i may be so bold, so self-involved, i would like to put another term on the table: the anxiety of artistry. to phrase it succinctly: the artists fear of creating, in the towering view of time passing and artistic giants arising, art that will transcend the moment and be placed among the canonized stars. this lofty dream, this dread of reality. if nothing is more real than art informed by experiences, what stops one from not wanting every experience elevated into art?
but one cannot live with this anxiety. this oppressing shadow hovering over every moment. i want to be able to enjoy a moment and not feel the weight of posterity on my shoulders. the fomo of the future, the fear of missing out on another piece of art hopefully treasured for someone, somewhere. one will drive oneself insane with this demanding angst. unfortunately, i don’t believe it can be dispelled altogether. it is part of the artistic experience, a corner stone of the artistic motivation that compels one forward — pushing, urging, that insistent shoulder-clinging angel/devil spurring creativity. conversely, i hypothesize that if not dispelled — at least temporary — it will only lead to guilt induced misery. too many names and artworks have been tainted with the societal notion of the suffering artist, the victim fallen prey to his or her own artistic anxiety.
so what can one do? i do not know the answer, nor will i pretend to. i just know that it is exhausting to live in two mentalities at ones: the moment unfolding and the secret hidden desire to capture it before unfolds into another. this desire, this two-fold persistent need. it is the urge that births every artwork. it is the desire (to borrow the photographic metaphor), to capture the person on film just as they’re turning the corner. to grab ahold of the moment in a flash before it disappears — to in the quick, transient moment — grab ones camera and capture the tailcoat hovering in the wind before it disappears forever from view.
the artistic impulse is therefore, in the space of a single breath, to capture the frail moment. the artistic experience is, in turn, to hone it into art, and (to continue the metaphor) develop it in the darkroom. print it out, frame it, hang it in the gallery. it then simultaneously exists as both memory and artwork, belonging to both creator and beholder. holding meaning for both parties, the moment has transformed from personal experience into art. it is shaped by the beholder just as it is shaped by the artist — imbued and transformed by the things it signifies for us.
what i want to say is that this duality, this double-consciousness, is perhaps what is responsible for this affliction. the artist perceives the world from two perspectives: the present unfolding, and the incessant reminder that this present has the potential to unfold into art.
what to do with this incessancy is up to every single artist.
i say, let the life inform the work. it is a glory and a privilege to view things from a dual perspective, especially when one of them is the ability to discern beautiful things. beauty is always needed. and so is art.
PS.
i hope, with the aid of a name, this condition can be more easily recognized (barring self-diagnosing an identity flaw, the possibilities may be mentally illuminating). to end on a meta note: obviously my own anxiety influenced this piece. weeks of artistic existential dread culminating into a work of its own. just as the photograph — shot, developed, and hung: i release it into the world ready to be made anew by the beholder (or in my case, the reader).
