How to Be an Artist

“Look for what you notice, but no one else sees.” ~Rick Rubin

I dread that stan­dard din­ner par­ty ques­tion. What do you do?

I nev­er know exact­ly how to answer, because the answers are end­less and con­flat­ed and none ful­ly encom­pass the truth. I am a yoga teacher. I am a mind­ful­ness coach. I am a writer. A moth­er, a wife, a read­er, a musi­cian. My heart longs to say I am an artist, but it sounds pompous and over­ly dramatic.

I am cre­ative. So are you. Being alive in the world means being inher­ent­ly cre­ative; we are born with wild imag­i­na­tions, lean­ings toward awe, and an insa­tiable thirst to dis­cov­er. Babies are hard­wired to test and seek and uncov­er, mak­ing cre­ativ­i­ty our default setting. 

Unfortunately, as time pass­es, most of us sup­press or dis­miss this dri­ve. The ones who active­ly har­ness it become the shamans, the dream­ers, the lucky few who aren’t scared to feel all the feelings. 

Being an artist requires a ded­i­ca­tion to the prac­tice of bring­ing that cre­ative force forth into the world. It’s an inten­tion­al way of being in the world, trans­form­ing the cre­ative human dri­ve into the Brooklyn Bridge, a poem, a vac­cine. Into Peter Rabbit, Motown, a per­fect hair­cut, hybrid cars. Into the iPhone, a patch­work quilt, The Parthenon. Into Fur Elise, a sen­su­al tan­go, make-up con­tour­ing, a tow­er­ing wed­ding cake, a gor­geous tat­too, a tele­vi­sion series that brings us to tears. A dri­ve and ded­i­ca­tion that turns a young man into Ansel Adams or Billy Joel, a young girl into Lady Gaga or Meryl Streep or Jodi Picoult. 

It’s some­times hard to be an artist in the social media age. The cul­tur­al land­scape gives me plen­ty of trash advice about how to be in the world (young, thin, white, rich). My artis­tic endeav­ors might not seem “suc­cess­ful” using the cul­tur­al met­rics of fame, beau­ty, or mon­ey. But true artists care not for cul­tur­al met­rics, though we do have to eat and pay the mort­gage, which can be a real bum­mer in a world that doesn’t always val­ue our con­tri­bu­tions. What to do when what I’ve been told I should want clash­es with my deep­est intu­ition of what I actu­al­ly do want? I needn’t draw an income from my cre­ative endeav­ors to be con­sid­ered an artist. 

I want to be awake. Being an artist requires ded­i­ca­tion to the work, but the real work, as Rick Rubin reminds us, is to “Look for what you notice, but no one else sees.” An artist is ded­i­cat­ed to hon­ing their notic­ing mus­cles, being in their body and in the moment more often than they are not.

But we are nev­er not in our bod­ies, I imag­ine you argu­ing. After all, our body is with us every moment of the day. While this is true, I sus­pect most peo­ple at most times are send­ing their minds afield, throw­ing their atten­tion to the past or the future or into anoth­er inane Tik Tok video while their phys­i­cal body just tags along for the ride. We are here, but we are not here. 

We look every­where but see nothing. 

Being here is hard work. It’s an active choice of curios­i­ty and imag­i­na­tion over fear or dis­trac­tion. It requires patience, sur­ren­der, and inten­tion­al con­cen­tra­tion. It asks us to be gen­tle with our­selves, to give into the idea that curios­i­ty is an end to itself and the results of our cre­ative endeav­ors need not be per­fect (because they nev­er are). It asks us to feel all the feels, which is scary in a world seem­ing­ly gone mad. Being here means we embrace all of it, the moun­tain­top moments as well as the low­est val­leys, the laun­dry with the laud­ing, our men­tal trig­gers, and our heart glimmers. 

But every­thing of real val­ue is hard. Hard, but worth it. 

Have you set aside your inher­ent cre­ativ­i­ty? Here are my must-read books about how to be an artist. Maybe they will inspire you as well.

1. Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert
2. Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott
3. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King
4. The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin
5. Walking in the World: The Practical Art of Creativity by Julia Cameron
6. Art Matters: Because Your Imagination Can Change the World by Neil Gaiman
7. Creative Quest by Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson
8. Out of Our Minds: The Power of Being Creative by Sir Ken Robinson, PhD
9. The Art of Living: Peace and Freedom in the Here and Now by Thich Nhat Hanh
10. Rooted: Life at the Crossroads of Science, Nature, and Spirit by Lyanda Lynn Haupt