During his travels, a man met an artist. The first thing the artist did was ask him for his assistance.
Before she made the request, the artist told him her story. She told him that she practiced to be an artist for twenty years. She came to the conclusion that what she had created during that time was not to her liking. She told him that she was too driven by ideas and fame. Her pursuit of these things was the problem.
After twenty years, she burned everything she had created.
The artist then decided she would wait for inspiration. For this, she needed to have an open mind. She decided to remove the facts, the intellect, the ideas, everything, from her mind. Those things are inaccurate, she told him.
And then she waited.
The artist waited and waited and waited. And then one day, an image of an adobe brick house appeared to her, so she moved to the middle of the desert, and with her own hands, build herself a studio. The structure took her many years to complete. During this time, she did not create any new work.
Once completed, the artist sat inside her isolated studio and again, waited for inspiration.
After several more years, inspiration came to her. She saw a small, colorful image. To her it looked like innocence. And she set upon creating this colorful image, blowing it up to a very large size. Then she knew, this is what she was meant to do. For twenty or thirty more years, she waited for an image to appear in her mind’s eye and then she created it.
Her story told; the artist paused.
She then explained that she created her last artwork over five years ago. She stated that she is an old woman now. She is worried that she no longer is able to wait, that inspiration in this way, will no longer happen. She asked for him to help her find inspiration another way. She knew she had much more to create, but that her time was running out. Would you help me, she asked him.
I will stay for a while and help you, he said, but I will need a day to determine how to proceed.
~~~
The man told the artist that he had come up with a way to help her and went on to explain how. Every day in the morning, the man would enter her studio and, with his finger, write a word on her back. When the man was done, he would leave the artist alone in her studio for the rest of the day. The artist would create the first thing that came to her mind. After some thought, the artist agreed.
They would start the next day.
In the morning, the man entered the studio, wrote the word “J-O-Y” on the artist’s back, and left. The artist did not emerge until after dusk. She invited the man to see what she had created. The man entered the studio alone. The room glowed with a warm light. There, as large as the studio would allow, a child, frozen on a swing, floating on the upswing and nearly silhouetted, with a large expanse of the most beautiful blue imaginable behind. Everything else in the room disappeared, and there was a calm quiet, like holding a breath.
Both the man and the artist agreed that this method of inspiration was a success. They would continue at dawn.
At dawn, the man wrote “Y-O-U-T-H” on the artist’s back and left. This time the artist did not leave the studio for three days. The man waited until he was invited into the studio. On the left, the sun was high over the seashore, warm water meeting sand. As the man walked to the right, there was a path that entered a forest and he could feel the air cool as he walked along and under the trees’ shade. From where he stood, he could see the path going up a mountain. Some parts of the path could be seen as he looked up, but there were other parts that were out of sight and unknown. The path went beyond the line of trees and to the top of the tall mountain.
The man and the artist continued in this way for years. Words that inspired beauty, magic and wonder.
“W-O-R-K” resulted in worn boots on a porch, scuffed and marked, a patina formed over time, and years of sweat and effort saturated the air like a humid afternoon.
For “F-A-M-E” it was very dark except for the flickering coming from a mirror and its reflection, a burning candle. The two objects giving their full attention to each other, as if nothing else in the world existed.
“S-A-D-N-E-S-S.” An anatomical diagram of a working body. However, an organ had fled it original location in the body and was hiding deep inside the anatomical thigh. The studio pulsed with the low, dull beating of the misplaced heart.
“T-I-M-E” resulted in a huge rock along the seashore. The rising waves slowly and completely removing the rock from view, from memory.
There, for “C-O-M-F-O-R-T,” a big ole pig on its back wriggling in a thick pool of mud. Sun warming its belly as it raised and lowered in snore. Cool mud cradling its body. A peaceful look on the pig’s face, eyes closed, almost smiling.
When the man traced “W-I-S-D-O-M” on the artist’s back, she spent much longer time in her studio than before. Entering, the man approached a pedestal, light emanating from the object it held. The pedestal held what looked like an oversized glass paperweight, shaped like the top half of a globe. Looking closer into the glass the man felt a steady breeze and saw something familiar, but slightly different than what he recalled. It was a view from the top of the same mountain the artist had created years before. The view looked down the mountain, over the trees and to the sea. From above, the entire path could now be seen. Each turn and hill, each obstacle and cliff.
Over time, the methods of the artist became more refined, economical, deliberate. Her time spent creating each work in the studio became less as she grew more confident. The man felt that he had fulfilled his request, and he told the artist that he would need to move on soon. Much more frail than when they first met, the artist asked the man to stay for just a few more days. The man, knowing the artist’s time was short, agreed.
The next morning, the man wrote a word on the artist’s back, thin and curved from the weight of time. The man wrote “L-I-F-E.” After the artist finished, the man entered the studio. Inside there was a long, horizontal line. It was a confident and imperfect line. The man looked at the line for a long time. Whenever his eyes focused below the line, an unsettling feeling of cold and fear and dread came over him. Looking above the line, however, his heart warmed, the fear disappeared, and he was free of worry. This blissful state remained as he left the studio.
The man felt changed in a way he could not describe. He wanted to ask the artists so many questions. He looked for her everywhere. He looked and looked but could not find her. The artist was nowhere to be found.
