Desolation leads to greater love

I've had a real epiphany with regard to myself as an artist after this long "dark night" which is I suppose the point at which one ceases to need any outward sign or external acknowledgement of one's state of being. 

I struggled for a long time with disillusionment, because I don't care to make art that is marketable, that fits into the canon, that attempts to help one set of people feel more enlightened through contact, or that signals wealth or privilege or intellectual superiority; I don't care to overtly attempt to manipulate societal norms either through willful conformity or rebellion beyond the point that my very existence and action will inevitably do. All I ever really cared about was inquiry, reflection, and discourse. I don't care anymore about making "my" mark or gratifying the angst created my own struggles with mortality. I never could make art as an ego driven act, and I have never liked the cult of the genius. To me, art and aesthetics is a pure communion whereby ones own mind interacts with the wonder and terror of all things and thingliness; but study of art and aesthetics should be taught alongside the study of politics and war. 

There have been so many reasons, all personal, for my estrangement from the "art world" and I will not pretend that there has not been a period of great bitterness and anger, but also I've had to struggle with that chasm one gets to as an innate nihilist. How do you do things when you are constantly asked to justify them? Is there a point, a higher purpose? If there is not, then what is there about *you* that justifies their being done? Is making a genuinely pointless act in dire earnest not a terrible and irreconcilable contradiction?

I have killed most of my ideas because I let other people's agendas control my inspirations due to the fact that on a deep level I know quite well that I simply want to see some things. I want them, and that is pure will and ego. At the same time, one can want for the perceived good of others which is still will and ego just as one can want randomly for self gratification, which has never worked for me as an approach. I've also struggled with the fact that to me the idea trumps all. I've had many ideas of mine stolen, and I can't bring myself to mind. Love of ideas is alien to love of self in my mind, and having something come through me to others is an end in itself. If an idea survives me, then it is beautiful. After my death I won't know anything. This fear I've carried, this desire to create a legacy, it poisoned me when I realized it may not be possible. It allowed others to control me and use me to generate their own ideas. But I think the poison was good medicine in time. The weakness and vulnerability were all my own because I am by nature one who creates, and this requires weakness and vulnerability where remaining faithful to one's own vision requires induration. One must learn to open and shut like an oyster and to remember that every pearl is a little life.

Now I'm engaging in a process to start documenting some of my ideas. I'd like to share them. Some I will try to accomplish, some I would love to collaborate on, and others I hope will just inspire some one else.