or rather, ours

This morning, I came across a comment over at Wonkette that rattled around me head for a good 5 minutes. The person was talking about having doubts about their abilities: “I’m going to try to do some art, which I am not really good at.” I told them:

I made my living as an artist for more than three decades (tattooing and commissioned drawings, along with some graphic design work). I come from a family of artists and musicians, some of whom were a bit snotty about it. Here’s my opinion about “I’m not really good at it.”

It doesn’t matter.

Well, it does matter if you want to get people to buy your art. But that’s not why most of us are doing art.

Do art for your soul. Do art to see and hear the world a little differently. Do art to work out stuff you can’t put into words. Do art because it feels good. Do art because it makes you laugh, or find delight, or let out the tears, or the rage. Do art because there’s something about making your body respond to what your brain concieves.

Do art because humans have been expressing ourselves through art for tens of thousands of years. Trust your ancestors: art is part and parcel of us, and being “good” at it misses the point entirely.

I feel the same way about singing: I don’t care if you can’t carry a tune, if you find joy in it, sing your heart out! And the same about dancing, and the same about pretty much all expressions we make: we need to express ourselves, in whatever form, however we can.

I don’t know that it’s solely attributable to the commodification of art over the centuries in the West. That’s part of it, but there’s some intellectural snootery going on there that is soundly based in classism and the education of the wealthy. That class snootery is connected to commodity capitalism, but it isn’t precisely the same thing. Whatever the stew of reasons we do it, our tendency to look at our art, and quantify it as “worthy” because we couldn’t sell it or get awards for it, isn’t really helping any of us.

Go Forth and Art!