A labor of love

My brother has been working on a short animation for the last two years. It was not selected for Oscars and that was a disappointment for me at least. I thought the quality of his work was great, as did a lot of people around him. Our discussion took a slightly refreshing turn. With his optimism and my pessimism there was a balance in which we explored a few ideas.
As Gustafson says, i managed to take one step in the right direction. It was a small suture (number 10 like the ones used by plastic surgeons for the face) in the unbalanced bifurcation. On one hand like always was the ever hungry pack of the exterior world and on the other was the internal freshness which makes the essence of people and that makes them create beautiful art.

The popularity=acceptability by the external world was the agent that was making him seek out appreciation. Appreciation of a society of rigid rules. Rigid rules designed to keep the production machinery from growing bigger and bigger. The world where acquisition turns in to an addiction. Acquisition of money, acquisition of power, acquisition of love, acquisition of piety and acquisition of happiness. The more and more acquisition is designed to fail at one point. And at that time, when facing failure, a person finds oneself captured in a one dimensional world. It is easy to recognize a one dimensional world from the characteristic two options that face a person at that time (complete salvation and complete annihilation). Splitting!

I read somewhere that to wait for appreciation of a work of art is like throwing a rose petal off the cliff and waiting to hear it strike the ground.

Where as I have posed the problem with the external world, there is a problem with the internal world of artists and introspection and dreams. There is equal danger in there also. In there is a world which associations are made, time stops and senses mix. The libido turned inwards does not leave a person fit to function and thrive in life. There is an element of functionality in a schizoid personality also but not a lot of adaptability with loved ones. And the worst part is that not a lot of people are lucky enough to be schizoid. They can be extremely anxious also always being used by the world and giving us the problem of the classic exploding doormat, as Gustafson would put it.

There have been artists who have broken on the rocky shores of an exterior world or gotten lost in their interior world. There is an archetype that exists of the reincarnated being. The Buddha who found Nirvana. The Wahi of the Muhammad PBUH. All people escaped life and found themselves inside and then returned to be a part of the world. From Lords of the ring Gandalf turned from gray to white.

The trick is as Gustafson puts it, to survey the field and decide on a game plan. To have the slow deliberate movement and a quick instinctual movement and to alternate in between them based on the field.

That is the labor(external) of love(internal).