The Crowd, the Critic, & the Muse - excerpt

Enjoy this snippet of my morning read:

Entitlement is not a friend of art.  Work is.  Pain is.

Pain is that blessed and despised universal experience that creates more true art than any other human experience.  Love is racked with pain.  Life's most joyful experiences--the birth of a newborn baby, the formation of a deep friendship, or first consummation of love--all are associated with an experience of pain.  A wedding is the joyful union of two lovers, but it begins with, "Who gives this bride away?"

Pain is as common as skin.  We enter this world in pain, struggling for our first breath, and when we leave, we struggle for our last.  Life ends when that struggle ends.  So does good art.

Pain is not the same thing as suffering.  One can fully experience the pain of life without being the tortured artist who lives in constant agony.  But creation is no easy task.  Good art demands a fight.