“Why be an artist when you can be happy?”

(for Margaret and all young people reaching into life)

The above is a frequent question I get asked by well intentioned visitors who find the fierce isolation of Windgrove a bit daunting.

However, asking someone are they happy or lonely is like asking “are you hungry?”. Most days — on both accounts — yes, but I’m not starving, nor anorexic. Happiness like sadness comes and goes with the tides.

The question itself is wrong. Rather it should be: “How are you honoring the miracle of your birth?”

Self-Portrait

It doesn’t interest me if there is one God
or many gods.
I want to know if you belong or feel
abandoned.
If you know despair or can see it in others.
I want to know
if you are prepared to live in the world
with its harsh need
to change you. If you can look back
with firm eyes
saying this is where I stand. I want to know
if you know
how to melt into that fierce heat of living
falling toward
the center of your longing. I want to know
if you are willing
to live, day by day with the consequence of love
and the bitter
unwanted passion of your sure defeat.

I have been told, in that fierce embrace, even
the gods speak of God.

David Whyte

The Man Watching

I can tell by the way the trees beat, after
so many dull days, on my worried windowpanes
that a storm is coming,
and I hear the far-off fields say things
I can’t bear without a friend,
I can’t love without a sister.

The storm, the shifter of shapes, drives on
across the woods and across time,
and the world looks as if it had no age:
the landscape, like a line in the psalm book,
is seriousness and weight and eternity.

What we choose to fight is so tiny!
What fights with us is so great!
If only we would let ourselves be dominated
as things do by some immense storm,
we would become strong too, and not need names.

When we win it’s with small things,
and the triumph itself makes us small.
What is extraordinary and eternal
does not want to be bent by us.
I mean the Angel who appeared
to the wrestlers of the Old Testament:
when the wresters’ sinews
grew long like metal strings,
he felt them under his fingers
like chords of deep music.

Whoever is beaten by this Angel,
(who often simply declines to fight)
goes away proud and strengthened
and great from that harsh hand,
that kneads her as if to change her shape.
Winning does not tempt this woman.
This is how she grows: by being defeated, decisively,
by constantly greater beings.

Rainer Maria Rilke (translated by Robert Bly; adapted Peter Adams)

Whether it’s to follow an artistic path or otherwise, my advice is to not be afraid when the raw beauty of life pelts you.