What does it mean to dream as an artist? What is your/our responsibility as an artist?
I think it’s important to define how I’ll be thinking of these words before diving in. One of Merriam-Webster’s definitions of “Dream” is as follows “a series of thoughts, images, or emotions occurring during sleep.” …another one that caught my attention was “a state of mind marked by abstraction or release from reality”. So, both definitions of dreams mention sleep or release from reality. I guess this can mean that a dream can be as fantastical or as far from “reality” as possible.
And then “an artist”: “a person skilled in any of the arts”. This definition is interesting to me, because I suppose I think of humans as artists. I believe everyone is an artist of their reality but now we have some common ground. A universal knowing of how I’m thinking of this word.
So… in my mind, the deepest truth of an artist is the artist as a creator. If the core of the artist is to create, what would be the dream of the creator? And, if “dreams’ are something set apart from reality …what is it that dreams are invincible to? I think the answer is: limits. In dreams, they are fantastical and often come from an uninterrupted place because our subconscious goes places maybe our mind is nervous or has forgotten how to get to after the conditioning of “reality”. Now, the question becomes simple to me. To dream as an artist, one must think past “limits”. What if the story I told went like this? How far could I take any idea? The responsibility of the creator then, would be not to confine to the limits that seem to exist in our reality.
It is OK to be confined if that is what we CHOOSE, but the important part is the choice. The important part is being aware of what we are choosing. Because it is so easy to be influenced by our environments, it could be detrimental to any human living in a certain condition because they don’t have the knowledge of being completely submerged in this. I have noticed a lot of my art talks about reminders … because life is so full of distractions, I create art to remind myself of the things we so easily forget: the choices we have; the power we have; how we choose to use this power.