Notes on this Issue:

Comfortability is the death of an artist. 

By ‘artist’ I mean anyone that engages in the expressive arts, whether the medium is musical, visual, or literary. An artist creates due to necessity. No real artist is driven by the appeal of pretty sounds, pretty pictures, or pretty words. A real artist creates because they have no choice but to do so. An artist creates for the sake of creating. Being an artist is an innate personal disposition, not a choice.

An artist must remain uncomfortable to produce quality work. The permanence and righteousness of this fact is due to the duty that every artist bears: the duty of expression. A proper artist must keep one hand on the pen, brush, or instrument at all times while the other firmly grips the emotional and spiritual experience of life, and, as anyone who has lived knows, life is anything but comfortable. Life is inherently uncomfortable. This is what makes it beautiful. Uncomfortability is the direct confrontation with the unknown, and the unknown is all we can really experience. Whereas, on the other hand, comfortability is the delusion that we have an actual bearing on what is going on. 

So, with that being said, let me address those of you who are artists directly:

If you are comfortable, relish in the instant for a brief time, gather your inspirations and then throw the vice of comfort into the damn trash. Return to your work. Exist and perceive and express. Your duty is to love, to hate, to experience agony and ecstasy and tell us all about it. You’re a saint with no God, left only to envelope yourself in the brutality and gentleness of the human condition. You are alone, you are selfish, but so what? In the midst of maintaining the duty of an artist, what you will produce and experience is more beautiful than could ever be made while living the life of a layman. 

To be an artist is to be religious while belonging to no religion. An artist’s religion is their work.

For those of you who are serious about your craft, I am here with you. For those of you who are real artists, I will suffer with you. For those of you who feel like you have no choice but to live and express, I will do so by your side. I will die beside you and all the artists that have preceded us, with our boots still on, uncomfortable to the final breath.

- W.B.