Faithfulness to The Artist-Self

The Artist-Creator’s Office (Dispatch No. 13)

Francis (not his real name), the uber driver pulls in to the parking lot. the night is young, but i’m tired. after a successful poetry event, my energy is spent. i left my heart on the stage. as he joins the traffic, destination confirmed, he asks, “how does your boyfriend feel about you staying out so late?” i laugh, wondering when, in our lifetimes, the curfew for people perceived as women finally ends. i can’t blame him; maybe this is the only path he knows to engage me in a conversation about femicide in kenya. like many men his age, and like many men possessing his mindset, the conversation is oriented from the seat of patriarchy.

“he’s an artist like me, so he understands that my work might have me out late,” i respond. my thoughts turn to said boyfriend (life-partner, actually). his own dedication to his work carries the sense of a deep relationship with life. his art, and mine, is not limited to the ways it flows within us and animates our being; it can be found everywhere and in everything, even within the inanimate. thus creativity transcends the subjective view of an artist. it is influenced by so much and driven by factors beyond comprehension.

we go on in silence for a while, until— “won’t he hit you if he doesn’t like what you’re doing?”

i laugh again, incredulous at the thought of anyone, let alone my beloved, laying a finger on me.

“no, my spirits don’t allow anyone to harm me. they would find themselves in pain if they tried. and he honors me and my spirits,” i reply, wondering myself at this answer. Frank chuckles at my reply, feeling freedom to delve into a tell-all monologue about his wives, who know nothing of the other’s existence (or so he believes). ask anyone to describe what love or relationship is and you’ll get a different answer for every person you ask. ask anyone about creativity and much the same occurs. the understanding we have of our artist-self is a relational dynamic. we know them the way we know a friend, close or casual. we give them space within our shared lives or not. we experience frustration and sometimes engage in messy emotional strategies just to try and get them to do what we want. sometimes, we hold them close and remain intimate with them. and other times, we abandon them. we come to different points in time and different emotional experiences that allow us or force us to understand them differently.

as Frank describes his relationship with both women, children with at least two decades between them, i see a dual man: one worn by age, stress, and university fees, and another eager to live another day as he plays with his toddler. i’ve been doing The Artist’s Way on and off in what could be a similar attempt at duality. i think on one level, i wanted to develop an environment of art-making where i would have more flow and less blockage. on another level, i imagined that doing this course would be the silver bullet that would eradicate every emotional hangup i have with being an artist and lead to fame, success, and MONEY. either way, i have been writing morning pages for a while now, more than 10 weeks. and while i have my own separate qualms with the book, the morning pages, in and of themselves, are a powerful experience. they allow an artist to engage intentionally with their artist-self.

faithfulness, too, has dual meaning. i grasp it in the usual sense of remaining steadfast in commitment and constantly renewing emotional connection to the commitment. Frank denies at this notion, claiming men are too curious to be tied down and sneaky enough not to get caught playing outside of their commitments. i tell him it’s probably because he’s willing to tell me, a total stranger, about his 16-month-old, but not his first wife after she saw the child in his phone gallery, and he passed it off as one of his friend’s grandchildren.

to me, faithfulness also possess a dynamic capacity: i believe faithfulness is about applying the ever-evolving understanding of whoever you’re in relationship with to anticipate their needs. i wonder if Frank has contemplated the needs presented to him beyond provision, food, shelter, and a warm body. this is the step where you apply yourself to provide access to nurturance in every form. it isn’t about being the person who makes everything happen for them. but i believe it has an aspect of it that requires keenness: the ability to spot a moment and sharpen them for it whether they decide to take the moment or not.

maybe it’s because i’m an editor. within this role, i grasp what someone wants to say and i ensure that the way they’re putting it allows it to be grasped by the people they want to reach or communicate with. it’s why i can tell Frank is using me as his confessor, his mind laden with anxiety as a year full of it comes to a climax. i sharpen phrases, tighten syntax, and chop up sentences; i’m a chef where words are concerned.

but at the same time, all i do is offer suggestions. not to Frank, though. who am i to advise a middle-aged man about his life, just because i find myself in his car? when i do my work, i take a backseat to the one whose hands are at work and, if they choose, my suggestions make it to the finished version. or not. it’s a strange role and i find it spiritually nurturing because i get to say things i truly believe and release them without being validated as to whether i was right or wrong. in fact, i may be right for my edits, or i may be fully wrong, but it is my responsibility to say what i believe needs to happen to make the work more effective.

and this is what makes me believe that our artist-selves require us to be faithful to them. here, we address the emotional obstacles that we’ve been ignoring, the ones that could cause stagnation in our deeper relationship with ourselves. here, we take on the creative outlets we’ve been avoiding, applying ourselves to them with the aim of finally getting over the ornate egoic image of the artist we are inside our minds, coming out into the work and beauty of real life and real living. like many of us, Frank is keeping his lives separate. “two wives in the same household are poison,” he cautions.

one definition of faithfulness has to do with the authenticity and faithfulness to an original copy. here, we embrace our dreams, especially the ones we’re embarrassed to admit we have in our hearts, and we set them free in our hands, letting them finally have a space in the real world. and here, we trust our hands, so prone to making mistakes, so touchy, so eager to reach for the eraser or the backspace button: we trust our hands and we get to work. here, maybe Frank tells his wives the truth and mends his family.

and sometimes the work is really just getting to know yourself again without any pretense or masks. this thing they call shadow work. recognizing the things you hide away from yourself. maybe the murderous men of this country actually face what makes them inflict their hatred for life, the state, poverty, and their own emotional damage, on women. the inner-self, the artist-self knows what it wants to make, what it wants to express. i haven’t talked to one artist experiencing blockage who didn’t have a wealth of ideas in their drafts. but the editor within, what Julia Cameron calls the inner critic, is extremely harsh, so keen that any interaction with them becomes a buzzcut, a mowing down to dirt. faithfulness has contorted into hypervigilance. the passion for excellence has morphed to become perfectionism. and the desire to reach people has become overwhelming such that the possibilities appear cavernous. we sense our infinities acutely.

finally arriving outside my apartment, Frank’s years seem to flood over him. he says he figured me for a high-school graduate, not “a wife.” he asks how old i figure he is. i skirt around the answer, hoping i can get out of the cab before i have to answer. i imagine what my life would be like if i never felt the need to dance around men’s egos, the way the state, capitalism, and patriarchy turn them into foot soldiers at my expense, the way my body and its femininity have been made into targets. i imagine what life would be like if men had faith in their desire to connect as people with women and other people, if there was an escape they could take to look past all the lofty and equally debasing lies that have been programmed, if not coerced, into their way of being. i imagine what everything would be like if we trusted that the artist-self knows what it wants. i wonder what it would be like if we could have some faith in it and give it space to flourish.