Dear Artist—Let me applaud you for staying in the game.

The arts are a tough racket. They’re one of the few human endeavors that have to justify their existence and yet they’re also one of the defining elements of our humanity. Remove the arts and we’re shaved apes.

Their production comes with personal risk. You’re made vulnerable to ridicule, rejection and political fashion. Not to mention the economic debasement most creative people endure. And yet, even if you’re broke and broken, you, dear artist, always find a break and a breakthrough. Even when conventional wisdom suggests the dream might’ve flatlined, you refuse to unplug it. And as always, its exquisite corpse of influences and ecstasies winks from its pillow, taps its watch and goads you back to work.

You were born with the poison pill of talent in your belly. You’ve suffered tantrums of taste and lonely visions that are maddening, revelatory, too much, but still, having traced the seams of reality, you learned its stitch and made it your own.

To create is to align with the machinations of the universe, to do what it does—make variations on a theme of what it means to be conscious matter that can record its flickers onto cave walls and silicon wafers.

As your critics squint and chortle, you’re arranging stardust into meaning, shaping the faint filigree that ensnares consciousness and makes it understand itself. 

To capture inspiration is to free it. When it’s imbued in the work you share, it replicates, mutates and becomes a benevolent contagion that moves from mind to mind, soul to soul. This makes us who we are.

Stay in the game, artist. We need you.

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