There’s a line from Kurt Vonnegut that I come back to constantly: “make your soul grow.” It may be one of the most important responsibilities we have as human beings, and especially as artists.
We live in a world obsessed with outcomes. Sales. Attention. Followers. Validation. But art has never been most valuable because of what it earns us. It matters because of what it changes inside us.
When you paint, write, sing, dance, sculpt, doodle, or make something with your hands, you are participating in becoming. You are uncovering parts of yourself that could never be discovered through productivity alone. Art is not only communication, it is transformation.
Vonnegut understood this deeply:
“. . . Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what's inside you, to make your soul grow.
Seriously! I mean starting right now, do art and do it for the rest of your lives. Draw a funny or nice picture of Ms. Lockwood, and give it to her. Dance home after school, and sing in the shower and on and on. Make a face in your mashed potatoes. Pretend you're Count Dracula.
Here's an assignment for tonight, and I hope Ms. Lockwood will flunk you if you don't do it: Write a six line poem, about anything, but rhymed. No fair tennis without a net. Make it as good as you possibly can. But don't tell anybody what you're doing. Don't show it or recite it to anybody, not even your girlfriend or parents or whatever, or Ms. Lockwood. OK?
Tear it up into teeny-weeny pieces, and discard them into widely separated trash recepticals. You will find that you have already been gloriously rewarded for your poem. You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what's inside you, and you have made your soul grow.”
— Kurt Vonnegut
That’s the point of living, isn’t it? Not simply to consume the world, but to respond to it. To leave traces of our inner life behind. To stay curious. To stay awake. To make things even when nobody sees them.
The soul grows quietly. Usually without applause.
But it grows every time we choose creation over cynicism, expression over numbness, and wonder over fear.
