A Word of Hope for Artists and Prophets

Don't lose heart. Your voice matters. Now more than ever.

“An artist’s job is to dream the culture forward.” — Taylor Mac

“The freedom to betray what you need to betray is critical to the work of bringing your art to the world.” — Jay Stringer

Artists and prophets are like two crystalline windows cut from the same pane of glass. Both serve as looking glasses out onto the world, exposing the truth of reality—both gritty and sublime—as it is right now, and as windows to possibility, revealing the beauty of what we may yet become, and calling us forth to believe in that vision. The voice of the artist and the prophet are both essential to the survival of humankind, and to our thriving as a people. They shine light on what needs to be seen, point to the path that needs to be followed, and raise the alarm when we lose our way. 

Is it any wonder that despots hate them? Is it any surprise that in every unfree society, the voice of the artist and the prophet are the first to be suppressed?

Yet, as every artist and prophet already knows, our voices are easily dismissed and our work is often undervalued by the societies we serve. Why is that, exactly? After all, if we’re offering the world something that is truly critical to its survival, why are our offerings so often ignored or even treated with contempt?

Let’s begin with a little honesty here: Very often we are ignored because our art is not good. We’re all beginners, after all. Mastery is hard won, and we all need decades of practice to perfect our craft. But there is a deeper reason our voices as artists and prophets are easily dismissed by the world, one that has more to do with the nature of human society than it does with us. 

To fulfill our calling — and it is a calling — both artist and prophet must make our home on the fringes of society. One cannot see the forest when lost in the trees. It is only from the mountain, on its lonely high places, that one can see the valley where all the people live. This necessary work of living apart from the world makes us stand out from the crowd as peculiar and strange, and those are not qualities that societies, as a rule, support. Social systems are designed for conformity, and people who depend on those systems for safety or prosperity are quick to crucify anyone who stands apart from them, particularly when they dare those within the system to look at themselves in the mirror. 

Thus the words of the prophet are often misunderstood, and the works of the artist dismissed as self-serving and pointless, the ravings of mad minds. This frequent rejection can kill the heart, and inevitably will, unless we, as servants of the world, cultivate a holy indifference to what the world thinks of us or wants us to be. As David Bowie once said, “I think it’s terribly dangerous for an artist to fulfill other people’s expectations.” We are the ombudsmen of the human race. It is our job to call out, to call forth, and to not conform. We do this in service of the world, out of love for the world and for life, even if that love is not recognized as love, or received for what it is. 

I think this is why artists and prophets are so often plagued with self doubt. We believe what we do is important, but it is not often seen by others in that same way. This is hard for our hearts, because we are all still human, like everyone else, and want to belong. We want to be valued. We want to be loved. Even so, while this relentless self doubt can be a crippling weakness, it can also serve as an inoculant against self deception, for the delusion of grandiosity is always knocking at the door. We are stewards of a power greater than ourselves, a simple trench in the earth, carving a path through which divine waters can flow. We matter, and our role in the world matters a very great deal. But we are not the water. We are not the point. 

I think it is good, and true, and prudent, then, for every artist and every prophet to take on the mantle of a nobody, to be content to be a “voice in the wilderness,” a song on the wind, and to do your work with the utmost devotion to both humility and to mastery, and to cultivate a holy indifference to the accolades of society, whether or not they ever come your way. 

But in all this, to never let yourself forget: Your voice matters. The world needs the art you were made to bring.