I DON'T WANT TO BE AN ARTIST

I am scared of what it means to be one

It’s midnight on Monday, and I’m thinking about how I don’t want to go down like Vincent Van Gogh.

I believe it’s a sad fate, something that makes you want to rip your brain out and stab it multiple times. I imagine myself, dead, with everything I have created left in the hands of family who see nothing of my works except for the sentimental value they hold towards it for me. Before that, when I was still alive, my work was mediocre, not amounting to anything. What a sad, sad life. Vincent died thinking he was a failure, that his works never amounted to anything, and he never got to taste the fame, the unsurmountable fame that came for his name. He’s cold, decomposed, dead, and was never made aware of how much everyone loved and heralded his artworks. His works amount to millions today, yet when he was alive, he couldn’t find anyone who would even consider them for a penny.

I mean what the hell. Why did that happen? Why couldn’t he be famous when he was alive, why couldn’t his works be loved when his heart throbbed with passion and hope for the future? The fact that tragedies like these happen is so frightening. What if I am mediocre now, but then I’m fucking brilliant hundreds of years after I’m dead? What about you, does that not scare you?

Sometimes, I think about how I could be like him. But then I remembered that he was great because he overcame suffering. Like other famous figures in art and literature or every other field. Like Kafka, who suffered internally that it bled through the words of his letters and spoke to millions of people even in the present. He was dead before he tasted the fame too. I, on the other hand, cannot be like them. No matter how much I think I suffer, nothing great comes out of what I create. So far, I have not produced any obra maestra. Instead, I keep making the same, unfinished drafts that lead me nowhere. When will I be great too? After I’m dead? I don’t want that, it’s so unfair.

To be an artist is to create. It’s more about the action of making something that holds importance, if not for others, then for you. It’s about making things that stand for something, that represents. It’s also not limited to producing something physically tangible… Artwork can be an idea, a perspective, or a magical way of seeing things. Actually, the more I talk about art and what it means to create it, the more I am losing the plot. This rant has surely drifted away from Vincent. Poor, brilliant Vincent. I can’t be like you. I’d rather not be remembered at all than to pass on never knowing that my works and I held a great significance to the world. The FOMO is great on this one. But then again, Vince doesn’t need my pity, after all, which one of us has their works displayed in museums, unceasingly admired upon every display?

It is crude to only use Vincent Van Gogh as my reference for an artist, but who else? He’s the only one I am semi-familiar with so far, and his marvelous tragedy is something that can be fondly pondered about. I think I’ll end it here, despite the title, I am born one. I have molded myself to be one. Even after death, no matter what I think of myself during my last moments, like Vincent, I am an artist.