Vie d’un Fumeur
Inhaling and exhaling smoke, art, mystery and love
A while back I watched the movie Gainsbourg (Vie héroïque), a magical realism biopic about Serge Gainsbourg, a wildly popular french singer/songwriter who died in 1991 and who apparently did a great job embodying the stereotype of the wild, addicted to everything, creative artist.
A skinny, funny-looking guy with a big nose and big ears, Gainsbourg was imbued with off-the-charts personal charisma, born of artistic compulsion/confidence that is indeed heroic when it confronts fear, greed, smallness, and by doing so ups the ante and wins the day. When that same artistic compulsion fails to respond to direct human need, it doesn’t look quite so heroic.
The film might alternatively have been subtitled Vie d’un Fumeur or even better Vie de Tabagisme which was the translation my french widget gave me for ‘the smoking life.’ When I reversed the direction, French to English, it became ‘a life of tobacco addiction.’
The movie was wreathed in smoke, curling languidly from the never-ending lit cigarettes in Gainsbourg’s, and pretty much everyone else’s, fingers and mouth. Those were the days, I guess. Alcohol too poured freely as a balm for existential angst and anguish, aka life. The creative process itself was as addictive for Gainsbourg, perhaps, as cigs.
I get that. I’m all for coping mechanisms. Coping mechanisms make the world go round. And if they result in work that moves other people, then, you go, girl, or boy. My personal stake here is a whorl and world of conflicted emotions about what it means to be an artist.
The tense and significant questions I have been asking myself for most of my life circle this movie like a halo of tobacco smoke.
1. Do you have to be insensitive to other people to be an artist?
2. Is it possible to be an artist without being insensitive to other people?
3. Is it okay to be an artist who is insensitive to other people? I mean, is it maybe worth it?
These questions cannot be answered, obviously. They can only be lived, one complicated life at a time. Here are a few things I know . . . it’s not much:
1. It’s more or less impossible to tell from the outside what kind of interior processing — hardware, software and malware, gives rise to anyone’s actions.
2. It’s hard to tell from the inside too.
3. Your kids don’t care how great an artist you are if you’re not showing up for them.
Nobody cares how great an artist you are, really. And if they’re not your kids, that’s okay. Let them not care.
What people care about is what moves them — what meets their needs, maybe even what elevates their needs.
The artist as hero is one who braves the interior unknown to bring forth treasures of the heart. To do this, you don’t have to be a painter or poet or musician. You need only find the courage, and above all the faith, to open yourself to the mystery of meaning and heartbreak.
The greatest art form available to us is life art, in which we trust ourselves enough to use actual circumstances and resources to create awareness, connection and love.
Inhale deeply from the illuminated tip of awareness and passion; and then softly exhale the unpredictable, shimmering smoke of love made visible: art.
I love the way you think and write. Thank you.