The Hunger Moon

 

 

The full moon at this time of year is referred to as the Hunger Moon. The Native Americans also referred to it as "Little Famine Moon" and "Storm Moon".  Our ability to feed ourselves in the United States at least no longer waxes and wanes according to the seasons. Would that it did; we'd all weigh a lot less. Be that as it may, I think most of us would agree that January and February is still ruled by The Hunger Moon.

As most know, I live for summer. I enjoy every aspect of summer's heat and lushness.  Even so, I find many things attractive about  deep winter. The bracing cold days that call for big sweaters and thick socks;  the early evenings with lights lit and curtains drawn against the winds that toss leaves against the foundations of the house, rattling the windows, rattling our bones with remnants of primordial fears of things that go bump in the night. 

This year we have not had deep winter as we know it in the northeast. The days have been mild and dry. The daffodils on the corner are four inches above ground. The grass in sunny spots is greening. A few violets are showing their inky purple petals by the front door. I do not complain about it. Navigating around walls of ice and snow for months last year was a Siberian experience that I have no desire to repeat.

But something is off.

This mild, sunny winter is playing havoc with my internal clock.  I find myself  disoriented when I begin to write "April" on a check and realize it is only early February. My head  tilts to one side like my dog does when he begins to bark at a stuffed animal and slinks off embarassed at being fooled. We are living under The Hunger Moon but thinking it is the Awakening Moon.

I think of all this while I read and reread the comments over the past few days. I hear a profound sadness in people, deep dissatisfaction, befuddlement, and confusion at how they are to relate in the world as artists in 2012. Again and again we complain about the intrusion into our lives, the great time waster of the Internet and social media, the weariness at needing to reinvent ourselves over and over and over again.

We are like the daffodils on the corner,  forced to bloom in February. It is not natural to live our artistic lives so on view. We didn't begin keeping art journals in order to post a page a day nor do we understand why we need to.Who has time to check or blogroll and FB each day and actually get our own work done?

So why don't we walk away? Why don't we just power down and go back to work? Time and time again, we confess to falling into the lure of endless pages of bright and pretty things to stare at. Bright and pretty things made by others instead of by us. It is an insidious conundrum for what I'm hearing about is not just that the bright and pretty things lure us away from our own work. It is that they also erode our self confidence, undermine our ability to come up with new ideas, and trash our creative joie de vivre. 

So why not just stay away?

Simply put, if you don't have it on a website, then it doesn't count.  If you don't have "x" number of FB friends, then you aren't popular. If you don't have a "fan page" then you aren't a professional artist. If you make something, but don't sell it on etsy, then you are not successful. If you don't  have "x" number of hits on your blog, then advertisers won't place their ads, big money-making blogs won't link to you, blogging conferences won't ask you to speak or teach, publishers won't publish your book,  and you are not considered a professional writer.

The Internet has created a world that is not objective but is objective. A world that does not exist but that rules how we perceive existence. The Internet has created a false culture of creativity that is in fact becoming the real culture of creativity.

We were living our lives as artists with a small "a". Now that the Internet has defined what a successful artist is (see above), our lives as "artists" are not enough; now we strive to be  Artists.  Aristotle defined the essence of identity as  "being qua being": to exist is to be, to be is to be something. With the metafilter of the Internet turned on all the time, it is not enough just to be. We have to be something that we constantly promote, advertise, market, and brand. We have to show others how to live like us, how to make art likes us, and simply, how to be us. 

Now how can that be? Does the picture I paint mean any less to me if I don't link it on social media and count the number of likes it gets? Is my writing any less successful than someone else's if she gets a hundreds hits for my every two? Does my new technique have less validity than someone who has sold out her online course on the similar technique? Do my journal pages resonate more strongly with me if someone pins it on Pinterest?

My head cries, no! My hearts sighs,yes.

I am no more or no less subject to this tyranny than you are. I reject the Internet and then come back grovelling to it for more. I turn up my nose at all those who are trawling their wares all over the social media, and then I berate myself when my own classes don't fill. I roll my eyes at yet another mixed media book being published, and I scribble titles for mine in the margins of my briefs at work.

I do not have a solution or a remedy. I am not the Ayn Rand of social media. I am merely an artist who finds herself making art less and less and looking at others making art, seemingly more and more.