Philosophy: What Is an Artist?

I am
a scribe
and a reader
and a poet
and an artist.

So I write
and I read
and I write
and I live.

2002

   I wrote that, as you can see, quite a while ago, but it still holds true. I believe that one does not truly live, or get all of life there is, if one is not an artist in how one lives one's life. In trying to explain to people what I mean by “artist”, and why I feel honest in taking that title to myself, I usually use the following definition and illustration.

   An artist is one who sets things as they must be, not as they merely can be.

   When I was taking a creative writing class in college, the instructor looked over our first papers and made some comments so we could change things before we turned them in for a grade. In my paper she pointed out two things, one “minor” and the other “major” which I would do well to change before turning the paper in.
   First was diction. She disliked the word “phosphorescent” as being too cold and technical. Her suggested replacement was “glowing”. Needless to say, since “phosphorescent” had to be there, and “glowing” was merely permissible, I left the word in its proper place.
   Second was point of view. My point of view character was unconscious in the last few sentences of the story, but rather than have him awake a captive, I switched point of view briefly to show him being taken an unwitting captive. Of course, she [the instructor] thought that a fixed point of view was absolutely necessary, so that too was to be axed. I left it as well in its proper position.

   I received a C+ on that paper. Later in the semester, after she had often commented about how my writing tended to be gloomy and depressing, though not downright dark, I wrote a story which could be construed as happily-ending. Though pensive, it was not gloomy. For that effort I received an A+. If you were to ask me which story I am most proud of, and which grade I am most proud of, I would tell you that it is the first. I am more proud of the C+ I chose than of the A+.
   Many people have told me I should have made the changes for her, and kept the originals for myself. That is not an artistic thing to do. An artist would, on grounds of artistic integrity, never put out something not how it was of a necessity, rather than how it was requested to be. And that, in my definition of the term, is an artist.

Crosspost: Harbour in the Scramble and The Random Quill