VSAA and Lifewriting

I am deeply touched by the notes from the VSAA students, and watned to bring all of this back around to the major point of this blog.  Yes, I talk about what I see in the world, but it's all in the service of helping to explore the thought patterns of one obsessed with balance (that's me).  Male/female, black/white, right/left, etc.  And, most importantly inside/outside.  It is the task of the artist to find a way to connect the inner and outer worlds.  The inner world of the soul, the emotions, the heart, and the outer world of skill and commerce and communication.  There is simply no substitute for the daily deepening of this connection, and the daily commitment to both truth and the path ahead.  I'm going to be starting a seven-part series about this connection in just a couple of days, but thought it important to explain why this is the most important thing you can do.
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There are no guarantees in life, or art.  Tomorrow is not owed us.  Therefore, we must live every single day as if it is the last day we will ever have.  Our friends, allies, and loved ones each stand at the center of their own worlds, seeing everything in existence from their own perspective.  In order to honor them, we MUST grasp that their hopes, dreams, and pains are not so different from our own.  Only such an understanding allows each and every one of them to be unique and beautiful in her own way.  Only this can motivate us to dig beyond the easy answers, and find the difficult truths. Can keep us working late at night and get us up early in the morning, eager for another day of rigor. Only a deep and abiding love for our own potential, and the ability to see ourselves in the audience, the consumer of our work, can we address commerse without prostituting ourselves.  The world is us. Art is the spiritual blood of the world.  We must create, or die.  We must tell the truth of our own existence, or our lives are in vain. We must lift up our fellows, or be lost in the abyss, alone forever.
We must create.  We must tell the truth. 
We must, or lose ourselves, forever.