Eureka!

Sometimes a great notion ... doesn't come, and yet as a professional artist we need to create whether "Eureka!" strikes or not. I've also found that waiting for "Eureka!" to come pretty much guarantees that it will never come. At least, not often enough to be worth waiting for. Certainly not often enough to pay the bills!

The suspense writer Tom Clancy has said he starts every day writing for work on his newest project. His tactic to avoid writers block is simply to start by editing the writing he's already done on the project, and by the time he's done some of that, his characters are tapping at his shoulder and wanting to get back to work with him.

Alan Held, a good friend and major operatic bass/baritone, says he doesn't warm up before a performance so much to "warm up" as we would get ready for say, sports, as to find where the various parts and registers of the voice are at that moment, and massage them into a seamless "whole". Parts or registers of the voice may feel like they are in a place different from the day before, but where they are now is the place he will need to be "in" to start the performance. They also may move as the performance progresses, and so, he must constantly and fluidly adjust what he does with the voice as it feels at that moment. If parts of the voice get out of place during a performance, the beauty and majesty of the voice goes away.

Both examples are, in their own ways, simply variants imposed by our respective media on what we as artists do to keep creating on demand. And that really is the difference between the professional and the amateur in anything ... the professional must create on demand, while the amateur can wait for "Eureka!" to come from somewhere out there.

As a photographic artist, I must somehow start when the session is ready to go, and then, as it progresses, adjust what I'm doing according to how I and my subjects respond to each other and the circumstances we've chosen to work within. No matter how hard we plan, I have to be open to winging it on a moment's whim, and also be ready to guide things back into the pre-arranged plan. And there aren't any guides or rules for making these kinds of decisions. It is always a choice of the moment.

A test all professional artists must constantly pass is how wisely we choose our course during the moment of creation, whether guided by "Eureka!" or not. It becomes a test of confidence, of the willingness to simply ... trust. Whether with voice or words or camera or oil, we have to trust in something that cannot be seen at the time, and can only be measured in value after we have let it fly. Life being what it is, the value of our work is ultimately set by others, quite often not even by the people who have contracted with us to perform our services.

The life of the professional artist is ultimately and always a work of faith. A willingness to live by intangibles, and to embrace uncertainty as a daily companion. I can't say as I'd recommend it to anyone, and yet, it is all I know how to ... be. The great operatic tenor Pavarotti once said that to be a professional artist, he needed to say to the world "I am a Tenor, you must listen to me!".

Well said, Luciano, well said.

We artists must find "Eureka!" somewhere in here, even if we don't know where we'll find here when we start. It's just what we do. It's how we live.