The Artist's Life
In defense of art as a strike against the current world order
My word/phrase for 2026 is: The Artist’s Life. Let me explain.
I just started saying this phrase—“The Artist’s Life”—, and writing it, and utilizing it as an explanation for a lot of things in my life, over the past several months.
To me, living an artist’s life means prioritizing creativity over capitalism, prioritizing a search for meaning, purpose, pleasure, and freedom, over money-making and subservience to the state.
Art is utopian! We imagine different ways of being in the world, and then we act them out, which is to say that we stomp and sculpt them into being. We birth new worlds, worlds to come, a more just, more holy world, and we manifest it, which is to say that art is productive—not in a capitalist sense, but in a world-building / world-tearing-down sense.
The state doesn’t want us to be artists. They want us to be workers. I see the distinction here as this: work is something that we do to create surplus, to create wealth, whereas art is made (surely, to some degree, for money, so that the artist can live a good, ethical life, but) more fundamentally because it feels good, or feels bad… or just makes us feel something. That this act of making, creating, emoting, feeling, is a radical act. It is a strike against capital, and against the state.
In January 2023, I took up The Artist’s Way, and worked through this book over a period of 3-6 months. It led me to start work on what is now my debut novel (still in progress, which I am now working on in an MFA program. Huzzah). It also led me to take up sculpture, because I wanted to make something tangible, in my hands, something weighty that I could feel, and shape—something so very different than words on a page or pitches hammered out on the strings of a piano.
After making a few sculptural works in the spring and summer of 2023, I put the tools away (stored in my ‘studio’—a shed in the backyard—where the tools have rusted real bad since then).
In 2026, now pursuing the Artist’s Life, I have cracked out the tools (and a big hunk of alabaster) again, and I plan to restart my weekly “artist’s dates” (a key idea from The Artist’s Way)—to use this time to focus on sculpture and dance.
As a professional writer, and also a small-business-owning piano teacher, writing and music—my two great artistic loves—are still where I place the majority of my creative energies. I am still writing a novel (as well as apparently also a creative non-fiction book-in-progress about music, too?), and I am still practicing piano, and teaching others how to fall deeper in love with piano. But as my main sources of income, there is certainly something corrupted by capitalism in the pursuit of these works. It’s not a deadly corruption, not soul-crushing in the least, but it’s there, to some degree, manifesting as a slight loss of freedom in the work as I am always thinking about how to pay my mortgage and my medical bills.
Which is why sculpture—and also dance (I’m taking tap lessons)—are so thrilling to me, and so crucial to the Artist’s Life. Because I kind of suck at these things (lol), and I am not going to exhibit a great sculpture, or perform a great dance number, anytime soon, so I may engage in this creativity and artistry without any attachment to a specific outcome. Just make stuff. Just experiment. Just engage in wonder, and the pursuit of pleasure, and the pursuit of freedom.
And I am finding that the more space I make in my life for freedom and pleasure—for the Artist’s Life—the more I bring that playfulness, that wonder, that experimentation, taking chances, that freedom, glorious freedom into everything I do, including my writing and piano, even as these also operate as businesses to keep a roof over my head and food on the table.
My MFA professor recently encouraged us to consider writing a simplicity statement: something about simplifying our lives so that we can make space for the pursuit of art. Here’s what I came up with:
I am alive, and each day I want to sit still with that. I try to live a simple, quiet, frugal, Artist’s Life. I do not strive for more than is necessary. I celebrate love and friendship and care. I cherish and listen to my body. I create and witness beautiful and profound things. My life tenets are: Freedom, Care, and Pleasure.
What does the Artist’s Life look like for you? How do you make space and time in your life for creativity, freedom, and pleasure?
A final word…
I now offer personalized writing feedback & individual mentorship to other writers through 700/14! (And we’ve already got a great group of writers signed up and participating! Yay!) I call it the 700/14 masterclass. Signing up is simple. Click on the big purple button and become a paid subscriber to 700/14—for as little as $5 a month; the cost of a coffee once a month at your favorite coffee shop—and you’re automatically enrolled. You’ll get feedback on your own writing six times per year, and at the foundational membership level you also get biannual one-on-one mentorship calls with me. How about that!
Keep writing. Your voice is needed in this turbulent world. Sign up by clicking the purple button below.