Meaning Making in the Present

If you’ve been following along, you know we’re nearing the end of a dialogue exploring what it does and doesn’t mean to be a successful artist. First, we asked the question: What if I never become famous? Then we wondered if “giving up” on fame was faithless: What does it mean to have faith? Next, we delved into the point of art-making: love. And now, we get down to brass tacks and practical application:

How do we live all of this out in our daily lives? How can we keep our art-making grounded in meaning?

Making art entails both a process and a produced piece. As creatives, it’s easy to feel like the produced piece is obviously the point, and the process is just a necessity. We need the finished novel at the end of NaNoWriMo (me right now) or the play to be produced somewhere (Amy right now) or the film to be developed or the painting to be hung or the scaffolding to come down and reveal the building. And it’s true that the end result we’re aiming for is worthwhile in a distinct way; the point of art-making is to make the art. Art is a finished, deliberately crafted, beautiful thing.

But the point of art-making is also to make the art. The result is made meaningful by a meaningful process.

When people talk about the value of art, they almost always talk about the training and the time it took. This shows that we know, intuitively, that value of art is connected to the process of making it.

If we are to wonder what it is to be a successful artist, I think this is an important place to start.

It is easy to overlook the value of process not only in our work, but in our lives. We look ahead: What’s the point? Where is this going? Will I be famous? Will this work be well-received? Will it make me money? Will I be considered worthwhile?

I’ve lived in New York and worked with artists long enough to know: if you can’t start enjoying the process, if you’re craning your neck all the time to look for some future, you will collapse of exhaustion.

This is not a new lesson, nor is it particularly controversial. In fact, it’s a little cliche: It’s the journey, not the destination. But it is easy to write off these pithy little sayings and miss the very real Biblical basis for such thought. And the Biblical basis is really, really deep and wide–in fact, I think it’s a key framework for understanding the Bible itself!

But for artists specifically, I look to God’s own creative process at the very beginning: Genesis 1.

We know this passage. God creates the world over seven “days.”

But… why?

It’s not like He didn’t know what he wanted to do. He had the vision of that fully realized, Day 7 reality from the start. And it’s not like it was just… too much work to do at once. Not for GOD. So why on earth would He take seven days to do it?

So… God deliberately works in stages, for some reason. He does something, and then He stops for some reason before resuming work. But what’s even more significant is: He affirms, at every point in the process, “It is good.” And this is God-level, pre-Fall, GOOD good. Better than anything we’ve ever known.

God shows us that the most ideal, MOST good type of creation is not a finished product, but a process.

So our fantasy of instant complete work, popping out of our minds into reality, isn’t just unrealistic. It’s a less good way to think about art. We don’t just have to work at art because the world is broken and we’re limited; even with limitless power and resources and energy, the better way would always be to engage in creating in a way that enjoys the process. It’s making art, not just making art.

So what does it look like to keep your art-making meaningful in the present? It looks like affirming “It is good” at every step of your messy creative process. You bought some paints? It is good. You stretched your canvas? It is good. You can’t get the lighting quite right, so you paint back over it with black to try again tomorrow? It is good.

Gratitude and celebration in the drudgery of the day-to-day is essential; the work of art is inextricably part of its value.

When’s the last time you expressed gratitude for the process of your work? What could you be grateful for today?

For Amy, this looks like treating auditions like fun little mini-productions, making costuming and character choices and trying out acting options with abandon, believing God is putting her in contact with casting directors and real people on the other side of her work and hoping to bless them or bring a little light to their day. Reframing her audition as meaningful in itself, not simply a means to an end, not a litmus test she passes or fails based on some end result–this has given her stamina to keep at it for years longer than the average NYC actor, and peace and joy she’s been able to freely share with others.

I find similar meaning in my writing, in the days of playing with words and creating drills and thinking through my characters, with no guarantees that it will ever get published or “go” somewhere else, and it’s sustained me through nine long years here. I’m just about to rewrite a novel that I haven’t had luck publishing so far; I am reworking it, not because I think the story isn’t valuable, but because I think it is! I feel inspired to play around with the world more and to push the characters into some new situations and see how they respond. I don’t think the work is worthless based on rejection, but I think fondly about how much I’ve enjoyed writing it so far and look forward to writing it a bit more again.

What have you enjoyed about your work lately? What meaning can you find in the struggles it has presented?

In a culture obsessed with efficiency, it’s hard not to want to skip to the end result and resent the time it takes to get there. But in the world of our Creator, the process is so much more than a necessary evil.

It is good. It is good. It is good. It is good. It is good. It is good. It is good.

Embrace that with the intentionality God shows in Genesis.

Continue with our final post collaborative post here: Biblical “Success”