Art in essence is about cultivating deep presence in one way or another. Whether it be a piece of first-hand creation, like composing a piece of music or making a sculpture; or an interpretation (re-creation) of a work that a classical musician or ballet dancer might do. Any meaningful process that comes close to being an art demands and inspires a presence that surpasses mere focus or concentration. It’s a whole different consciousness that is vast, dynamic and all-encompassing. It’s what distincts even the highest-level craftsmanship from artistry.

The tortured artist myth will have you believe that suffering is what creates great art(ists). I believe that is a half-truth at best, and a reductive fallacy. I think loss and suffering can be the biggest lessons in teaching (forcing, really) one to be present, if one doesn’t completely turn away in denial instead. Hence, suffering doesn’t create artists, but how one digests and crystallizes pain could be powerful agents toward transformation. Transformation that changes one’s presence with the self and everything else.

I don’t presume to know artistry, but life has thrown me a few lemons, and I feel I’ve gleaned from them some lessons about presence, art, love, and life. To say pain is redemptive stinks of yet another shallow reductive fallacy of the whole positive psychology thing. But one can’t deny that there can be tremendous transcendence in pain and loss, even when, especially when, you distinctly do NOT want to be present with it. But you do anyhow, and it changes you. Then one day you find a different nuance of presence in the form of a new sense of beauty in what you make, how you see, who you are, what you feel. And underneath that beauty the remnants of the searing pain never leaves. You learn to be present with all of it. Then you play something which touches that part of you, where words can’t reach, only to realize with a start the depths of the journey you’ve gone, the vastness of space you now have within.