I’m an Artistic Failure :(

Most of my important thinking is done in the shower. There’s something about the smooth flow of warm water which puts me in a trance and my brain detaches itself from quotidian concerns and floats into the rarefied atmosphere of the abstract. Anyway, just the other day in the shower I realized that I truly suck and communicating what I feel to other people.

Sure I’m a writer and possess an average skill with words. But sometimes I finish writing and feel…hollow. As if I’ve tried my best to get my feelings out there and haven’t succeeded. As if it’s still inside me struggling to find a proper way out and my writing has only scratched the surface. The best example I can give is my failure to convey my outrage over people abandoning their pets when the going gets tough. I did my best – truly. But at the end, I was frustrated. I even admitted as much at the end of the post.

I envy artists. Take painters or cartoonists – even those who draw stick figures. They convey in one pane what I would need pages to do, and still fall short. Look at this hilarious sample from the awesome site xkcd.com:

Someone is WRONG on the Internet!
Someone is WRONG on the Internet!

You see that…you SEE that? Isn’t it funny? It hits the spot. One pane – that’s it. No need to say anything else. No cloud of letters getting in the way. The mini explosion around the guy’s hands indicates the warmth of the typing…the scene is just freaking perfect. And stick figures!

How do they DO that? A picture is truly worth a thousand words.

I thought I too will try this to get my feelings across. I wanted to show show how horrible it is to abandon a dog after you bring it into your home as a puppy along with your first child. How it grows up and is part of your life on important occasions and how it loves you back without restraint. And then you leave him or her on the road to starve and get bitten to death by other dogs.

So my first pane needs to show the introduction of the puppy into the home. I thought perhaps a crib or something to represent the baby…but I just couldn’t form the scene in my mind. And even though I was aiming for stick figures, turns out that they require quite a bit of skill to use properly. This was the best I could come up with…

This is NOT worth a thousand words :(
This is NOT worth a thousand words :(

Ironically, the only message this picture gets across eloquently is my utter incompetence as an artist. So even though I find words incomplete and ineffective, they seem to be the only tool I have. I fare no better with other art forms either. Take this music piece by Ludovico Einaudi:

Words can’t begin to describe how I feel when I listen to it from start to finish. I feel I’m exploding with the need to express, but it’s trapped. The surge of feeling beats against my chest for release as if struggling to erupt. I want to reach out and transmit my state of mind to another person, but there’s a black void between us that can’t be crossed.

I envy those who have the gift of being able to use art to beam their feelings across – whether its painting, sketching, music or sculpture. The lower class of beings like myself will need to be content with the pathetic medium of words.

I am truly an island. Forever.

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18 thoughts on “I’m an Artistic Failure :(”

  1. Hey I’m jealous of artists, too!! I really think their brains are wired differently, because if you spend enough time with them you’ll notice they can see and understand things that us non-artists cannot. :)

    Reply

    • In reply to Purba

      Actually you’re right. The simpler and more evocative a piece of art is, the more the artist has probably broken their head over getting it just right.

      But I’m still envious of the fact that they can do it…

      Reply

  2. Your effort makes it look like someone is handing over a tortoise!
    Jokes apart..
    Its truly remarkable the way artists are able to get their messages across.
    As far as my divine enlightenment(s) are concerned, I usually get them while I am travelling alone.

    Reply

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