250 Words on Time and Monsters

[I try to start my day writing 250 words on anything. I’ll post one every Tuesday until I run out of good ones.]

“‘It is only half an hour’–‘It is only an afternoon’–‘It is only an evening,’ people say to me over and over again,” wrote Charles Dickens. “But they don’t know that it is impossible to command oneself sometimes to any stipulated and set disposal of five minutes, or that the mere consciousness of an engagement will sometime worry a whole day. Whoever is devoted to an art must be content to deliver himself wholly up to it, and to find his recompense in it.”

Imagine how much time you’d need to create something if you had no obligations or distractions. Say one month to write that novella, compose that concerto, chisel that sculpture. 

If you have a regular job, multiply that number by ten. If you have a spouse, multiply it by another two to five; a spouse and kids, another five to ten. Now your month-long project would take years.

My observations. Your mileage may vary.  

The catch is that if you didn’t have a job, family, obligations or distractions, your work might lack the inspiration it needs. Artists who don’t experience life have little to say in their art.

The appeal of becoming an “art monster,” focused entirely on creativity with no concern for life’s mundanity, is enormous. Let someone else clean, cook, socialize, parent. “I’m creating! Leave me alone!” Picasso was an art monster.

The problem is that if you’re not a Picasso, you may just be a monster. Maybe even if you are a Picasso.

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