Diary

When I was traveling I read this book by Chuck Palahniuk called Dairy. In it there is a woman that gets lured into this weird place she would get poisoned slowly, not enough to kill her but enough to bring her to a lot of pain and put her in a trance like state so that she can paint. I don't remember the details but she ends up creating a body of work that would cause people to have the Stendhal Syndrome. The Stendhal Syndrome pretty much is to be overwhelmed by how amazing a piece of art is that it would bring to tears, mesmerizing you on the spot, make you faint. The people in this town believed that this person that they lured needed to suffer in order to produce her best work.

This is an extreme case but I truly believe that for every great piece of art or design there is a level of sacrifice and suffering, that went into creating that work. Not exactly suffering physically, but the pain you had within yourself the things that you had to let go or leave behind so that you can produce your life's work, you can often sense in a great piece of work. If your life is of leisure and you seem to dabble in art and music chances are you tend to create work that is not very good. Van Gogh didn't live wealthy, pranced around and painted for fun, he was poor, he went crazy. Beethoven created his best work when he was deaf.

Before the sacrifice and the suffering you have to have that hunger, that drive. With that true hunger of what you want you realize what you have to sacrifice to get what you want. In that sacrifice you suffer. You suffer because of what you are missing out on, you suffer from that hunger that nags at you, you suffer from the steps you have to take for your progression, you suffer from the pain of wanting to achieve.

All the talent in the world can amount to nothing with out hunger.



Love,

Vince