NotitiesThe Artists Journey
Steven Pressfield
"The Artist's Journey" explores the distinction between the hero's journey and the artist's journey, emphasizing that the latter is a process of self-discovery and expression that lasts a lifetime. It discusses the internal and personal challenges artists face, the importance of their unique subject, and the mental strengths required to navigate their creative paths.
I found that what I had desired all my life was not to live—if what others are doing is called living—but to express myself. I realized that I had never had the least interest in living, but only in this which I am doing now, something which is parallel to life, of it at the same time, and beyond it. What is true interests me scarcely at all, nor even what is real; only that interests me which I imagine to be, that which I had stifled every day in order to live.—Henry Miller, Tropic of Capricorn (Page 7)
In Hollywood parlance, the All Is Lost moment is succeeded, often immediately, by the Epiphanal Moment. In this moment, the hero experiences a breakthrough. This breakthrough is almost always internal. The hero changes her attitude. She regroups. She sees her dilemma from a new perspective—one that she had never considered before (or, if she had considered it, had rejected)—a point of view that offers either hope or desperation amounting to hope. The narrative now enters Act Three. (Page 11)
Here is my Epiphanal Moment, as described in The War of Art: I washed up in New York a couple of decades ago, making twenty bucks a night driving a cab and running away full-time from doing my work. One night, alone in my $ 110-a-month sublet, I hit bottom in terms of having diverted myself into so many phony channels so many times that I couldn’t rationalize it for one more evening. I dragged out my ancient Smith Corona, dreading the experience as pointless, fruitless, meaningless, not to say the most painful exercise I could think of. For two hours I made myself sit there, torturing out some trash that I chucked immediately into the shitcan. That was enough. I put the machine away. I went back to the kitchen. In the sink sat ten days of dishes. For some reason I had enough excess energy that I decided to wash them. The warm water felt pretty good. The soap and sponge were doing their thing. A pile of clean plates began rising in the drying rack. To my amazement I realized I was whistling. It hit me that I had turned a corner. I was okay. I would be okay from here on. Do you understand? I hadn’t written anything good. It might be years before I would, if I ever did at all. That didn’t matter. What counted was that I had, after years of running from it, actually sat down and done my work. This was my epiphanal moment. My hero's journey was over. My artist's journey had begun. (Page 11)
I have a theory about the Hero's Journey. We all have one. We have many, in fact. But our primary hero's journey as artists is the passage we live out, in real life, before we find our calling. The hero's journey is the search for that calling. It's preparation. It's initiation (or, more precisely, self-initiation). On our hero's journey, we see, we experience, we suffer. We learn. On our hero's journey, we acquire a history that is ours alone. It's a secret history, a private history, a personal history. No one has it but us. No one knows it but us. This secret history is the most valuable possession we hold, or ever will hold. We will draw upon it for the rest of our lives. The hero's journey ends when, like Odysseus, we return home to Ithaca, to the place from which we started. We wash up on shore. We have survived. We have come home. Now what? The passage that comes next is the Artist's Journey. The artist's journey comes after the hero's journey. (Page 17)
The artist's journey is the process of self-discovery that follows. It will last as long as we're alive, and maybe longer. (Page 18)
As a young childless woman experiences the ticking of her biological clock, so you and I feel the pull of our as-yet-unlived hero's journey. (Page 19)
The hero's journey software in our heads is demanding to be lived out. (Page 19)
The hero () receives the Call when () walks into his/ her life and does/ says (). Hero crosses the Threshold of Adventure at () place and () time. Hero achieves his/ her goal () but must flee for her/ his life, pursued by Monsters () and (). The hero returns safely at last to (), the place from which she/ he started, by means of a (), bringing for the people the gift of (__________), hard-won from his/ her experiences. If you're an artist, I can fill in the final blank for you right now. The gift you bring is the works you will produce. (Page 20)
My own hero's journey lasted about two and a half years—from age twenty-six to twenty-nine. It hit every beat in the myth, by the numbers and in sequence. I had no idea, of course, that what I was experiencing might be called a hero's journey. I had never heard of the hero's journey. What was clear to me was that something was happening, and that something was a train I couldn't stop or slow down or get off. What was clear too was when it ended. I knew the exact moment. I could feel it. Even then, in that hour, I understood that the experience was of supreme value and importance. I didn't need hindsight. I knew in the moment. My family may have been repelled, even appalled by where I had been and what I had done; my friends may have feared for my sanity; others who cared for me may have shaken their heads at the waste and folly and futility. Even I understood it would take me years to recover. I didn't care. The trip was worth it. Why? Because I now had a history that was mine alone. (Page 21)
Subject is deeper than topic. It's not "what it's about," it's what it's really about. (Page 26)
It sounds facile to say, "We don't pick our subject. Our subject picks us." But I'm convinced that that statement is true. It's not your subject. It's your Self's, your Muse's, your Superconscious's. You were born with that subject but you never knew it. (Page 27)
Show me someone who claims he doesn't give a shit and I'll show you a born artist who's scared out of his wits to become that artist. Our subject is sitting right in front of us but we can't see it because we're terrified. We're terrified that, if we recognize and acknowledge our subject (which is our calling as an artist), we'll have to act on it. We'll have to make a decision. We'll have to put ourselves on the line. We'll have to take a risk. (Page 27)
Even if you haven't read any of these books, you can tell just from the titles that they possess a unified subject. Three critical points: One, this subject materialized on its own. There was no plan on my part. No conscious decision. No moment of inflection. Two, the subject was an absolute surprise to me. It revealed itself book by book, year by year, obsession by obsession. Three, I had no choice as an artist except to follow this subject, and serve it, as it revealed itself and evolved over time. (Page 28)
A critical part of the artist's journey is answering the question, "What is my medium of expression?" (Page 31)
AN ARTIST HAS A POINT OF VIEW (Page 32)
AN ARTIST HAS A STYLE (Page 34)
Style is inseparable from voice. It evolves out of subject and point of view and blends seamlessly with medium of expression. (Page 34)
AN ARTIST IS IN TOUCH WITH HER TIME (Page 35)
The artist in her journey speaks to and of her time. (Page 35)
The artist's journey is a parallel to the hero's journey in that you and I, the artists-in-embryo, must leave our Ordinary World (the conscious mind) and cross the threshold into the Extraordinary World (the unconscious or superconscious) to find and acquire our golden fleece (the knowledge of, and access to, our gift). The process, like the hero's journey, involves time. It involves suffering. It involves folly. Its crisis takes the form of an All Is Lost moment. Once you have given up the ghost [wrote Henry Miller], everything follows with dead certainty, even in the midst of chaos. The ghost that we give up is the ego. The illusion of control. The "everything" that follows is our artist's power—our subject, our voice, our point of view, our medium of expression, and our style. (Page 36)
Like the hero's journey, the artist's journey demands to be lived out. It demands to be expressed. (Page 40)
THE ARTIST'S JOURNEY IS INTERNAL (Page 42)
Iused to write at a desk that faced a wall. My friends would ask, "Why don't you turn the desk around so you have a view outside?" I don't care about the view outside. My focus is interior. The book or movie I'm writing is playing inside my head. Dalton Trumbo wrote in the bathtub. Marcel Proust never got out of bed. Why should they? The journey they were on was inside themselves. (Page 42)
THE ARTIST'S JOURNEY IS PERSONAL (Page 43)
THE ARTIST'S JOURNEY IS UNIVERSAL (Page 44)
THE ARTIST'S JOURNEY IS SOLITARY (Page 45)
THE ARTIST'S JOURNEY IS MENTAL (Page 46)
The artist's real medium is thought. Her product is the fruit of the imagination. (Page 46)
THE ARTIST'S JOURNEY IS A CONSTANT (Page 48)
THE ARTIST'S JOURNEY IS ABOUT SELF-DISCOVERY I've read many times that art is about self-expression. I don't believe it. I don't believe the artist knows what he or she wishes to express. The artist is being driven from a far deeper and more primal source than the conscious intellect. It is not an overstatement, in my view, to declare that the artist has no idea what he's doing. As Socrates famously declared in Plato's Phaedrus: . . . if a man comes to the door of poetry untouched by the madness of the Muses, believing that technique alone will make him a good poet, he and his sane compositions never reach perfection, but are utterly eclipsed by the performances of the inspired madman. The artist is not expressing himself. He is discovering himself. (Page 49)
THE ARTIST'S JOURNEY IS ABOUT THE ART, NOT THE ARTIST (Page 50)
What endures is the Self he is seeking, which is not "himself" but himself. (Page 50)
THE ARTIST'S JOURNEY IS DANGEROUS The artist, like the mystic and the renunciant, does her work within an altered sphere of consciousness. Seeking herself, her voice, her source, she enters the dark forest. She is alone. No friend or lover knows where her path has taken her. Rules are different within this wilderness. Hatters are mad and principles inverted. The artist has entered this sphere of her own free will. She has deliberately unmoored herself from conventional consciousness. This is her calling. This is what she was born to do. Will she come out safely? (Page 51)
ON THE ARTIST'S JOURNEY, ALL ENEMIES ARE MENTAL Fear of failure. Fear of success. Fear of the new, of pain, of loneliness, of exertion, of intensity. Need for external (third-party) validation. Self-doubt. Arrogance. Impatience. Inability to defer gratification. Predisposition to distraction. Shallowness of thought and purpose. Conventionality. Insularity. The need to cling to the known. None of these enemies is real in the sense that, say, a lion is real, or a man with a gun. All are products of the mind. (Page 52)
ON THE ARTIST'S JOURNEY, ALL ENEMIES ARE SELF-GENERATED The artist on her journey confronts no foes that are not of her own creation. Her fear is her own. Her vanity. Her need for adulation, for the attention of others, for titillation, for distraction. Like Walter Pidgeon dueling the monsters of the Id in Forbidden Planet, the artist possesses within herself the capacity to overcome these enemies. She has created them mentally. She can defeat them the same way. (Page 53)
ON THE ARTIST'S JOURNEY, ALL STRENGTHS ARE MENTAL Courage. Honesty, particularly with oneself. Self-confidence. Humility. Compassion for oneself and others. The ability to receive criticism objectively. Patience. Curiosity, open-mindedness, receptivity to the new. The ability to focus. The ability to defer gratification. Will. Mental toughness. The capacity to endure adversity, injustice, indifference. (Page 54)
ON THE ARTIST'S JOURNEY, ALL STRENGTHS ARE SELF-GENERATED None of the capacities listed in the previous chapter is innate, but all may be acquired by effort and force of will. (Page 55)
THE ARTIST'S JOURNEY IS A JOURNEY OF THE IMAGINATION (Page 56)
The artist on her journey will make everything up, including herself. (Page 56)
THE ARTIST'S JOURNEY IS ABOUT ACCESSING THE UNCONSCIOUS (Page 60)
THE ARTIST'S JOURNEY LASTS THE REST OF YOUR LIFE There is no other journey in this lifetime after the artist's journey (other than, perhaps, the transition to the next life). Once you board this train, you're on it to the end of the line. (Page 61)