The Price Paid for Greatness
Why am I doing this? How did I get to where I am now? That, my friend, is the question of all questions, for, you see, life truly is a spectacular thing. It toys with you as it pleases and after it gets bores, it throws you to the garbage. And that's what we are…nearly toys; the objects of pleasure for an ever unsatisfied puppet-master.
You see, as a youngster I always thought I would be the one who could make a difference, you know, change the world, enlighten the people. I was naïve…a dreamer. My God, in that time reaching for the sky, touching it, didn't seem impossible at all. How deceiving life can be sometimes. Reality struck me and my steep fall has deprived me of everything: of my dreams, my hopes, my expectations, my will to fight.
Artists always live under the impression that their gift is enough to get them through the day, as if creativity could provide you with everything you need: food, money, a shelter over your head. And for many years I myself lived with this disillusion. I knew the condition I was in, I could intercept everything that was going on around me: the people's thoughts, how they looked at me, what they said about me.
But this hunger for greatness has poisoned my mind to the point in which I couldn't make a difference between art and insanity, between what's real and what a devils' illusion, between life and death.
For this sin I have paid with my spirit, my art. I don't know. Maybe I was born in the wrong time, the wrong place, the wrong society. Sometimes I wonder if such a thing like the right place, right time, right society ever existed. If there truly existed man capable to comprehend the dreams and the visions of a struggling young artist.
No, I believe not. People like drama, they enjoy their fellow's pain, misfortune and unhappiness. And they would resort to anything to get a front seat to the greatest drama of all time. Pleasure comes from suffering; creativity and vision comes from suffering, therefore art comes from suffering. The more you struggle to uphold your vision, the more you try to change the world, the more they abase you to the point in which your spirit is broken and you no longer have the will to fight. Where can you find refugee in such in such a situation? For you see, once the object of their entertainment is gone and the curtain falls, all that's left for the crowd now s your inheritance: your paintings, your writings, your sculptures… your art.
And it's regretful because to them your art is not a reflection of your visions, but a reflection of your pain and misery. And the absurd thing is that that is not even your creation, it's theirs… for they always pushed you to the limit, always forced you to give your best.
What is art if not the face of a suppressed soul? What is the artist if not a pawn in this grotesque game?
What am i? I'm a struggling young artist in search for acceptance, enlighten and grace. A man who dared reach for the unreachable only to realize that my art doesn't need my life to survive, but my spirit…and through death I shall accomplish that.