The true nature of wisdom is that it can’t be shared. Each person has their own wisdom that is tied to their true self. The nature of an artist is to try to share their wisdom when the best they can do is share knowledge. This is certainly more satisfying than sharing mere information, but it’s still never enough. It’s not uncommon for artists to speak about being overcome by a kind of madness when they get into their zone. They don’t really know how it happened or where it came from but here it is: their art; their creation. Wether good or bad, nobel or base, authentic or not, this is what the artist has to show for himself. In many ways we value art more than most things, though not in a monetary sense of course.

When inner values spring forth into the material world we feel the inner value but cannot figure out how to give it value in the material world; it just is. And I think for most artists, once the work is complete, it’s in the past, done, time to move onto the next thing. Perhaps we even fear the stasis of our completed projects. And as much as we may identify with our art, we also seek to distance ourselves from it so that we don’t become identified as the work itself. After all the artist hardly knows how the whole creation was made. A person just sits down to something and gets tinkering with their craft and before they know it, behold: a work of art.

Life is the same. How often people say: “I don’t know how it happened: this happened, then that happened and then I did this, I don’t know why, and then all of a sudden this was the result. I don’t know why I chose this or that, I just did, and now….” Behold: life.

How much do we really know?