Monet, Dreamers, and Necessity

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"Every day I discover more and more beautiful things. 

It's enough to drive one mad. 

I have such a desire to do everything, 

my head is bursting with it." 

- Claude Monet

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I just watched a three part series on "The Impressionists". I have been naturally drawn to Monet's work over the years, but now I am also drawn to the man behind the work.  While learning more about him, I found so many connections with his way of seeing the world, and found myself deeply respecting his efforts, his relentless efforts - his trying. It cost him many things, but it birthed so many things, so many things... too.

I house a spirit similar to his inside of me. I could say "every day I discover more and more beautiful things" too. And that "it's enough to drive one mad" sometimes. It is like I experience these internal burstings, overloads of inspiration, sensory explosions of possibilities and realities that often leave me whirling and spurring off in several different directions simultaneously almost in a sort of desperation that seeks or longs for some way to capture and to share them.

Today I am contemplating the value of such things. The value of being one who dreams and seeks and feeds off of inspiration, and of being one who produces material renditions of those inspirations.

For Monet, the end results were the production of many,  many paintings and the fueling of many soul fires amongst admirer's of his work. But along the way to those end results, I imagine it came in to question often whether his was a legitimate occupation or not. Which is such a question I ponder over myself periodically.

Oh I don't question art itself or even the artist. What I am really questioning is art's relationship to money. How the world works. And why does dreaming, and art so often seem to take a back seat to the "roll up your sleeves and dig" kind of labor?

Many of us are artists in one way or another, yet will never "make it big". Most of us don't mind that we won't, many don't even care. Art is what we must do, because it is who we are.

But still, I find myself contemplating it's place - and find myself wishing for a world where the struggle of basic  necessities and  of survival is not in competition with the artist's need to create, where it's not in competition with the artist's true livelihood.