Artists and traveling

When I was a young poet, I used to think that traveling reality would be the only to reach bliss.

My dream visions were all obsessed with escape. I could not wait to high tail it out of my room, my town, my state, my country. My longings were all for the cities of the world, the most famous ones, and certainly the old ones : Paris, Rome, Cairo, Shanghai, the list goes on and on. I was convinced that the only way I could be at all a success as an artist was deep incessant travel. Most of my inspiration for the idea came from the most obvious of places: Rock stars who had toured. They were my biggest inspirations, Jim Morrison being forever my initial "beacon light" into the seashore that is literature , and so I thought ...travel is surely the only way. If I want to render myself an interesting person, travel is surely the only way.

To an extent, I think I was correct: my idea of travel and my curiosity about the world at large that the touring rock stars Initially inspired has definitely helped me. I can speak other languages now because of how obsessed I became with finding a reality distant from my own, and I definitely have never felt too comfortable thinking of myself as a "local" anywhere. Still, something else also happened along the way that has since made me think twice about traveling and the effect I think it sometimes has on artists, and here is the simple truth of it: I think some artists have gone too far with it, actually. And I think they've wasted their time. Especially artists like the rock stars I initially worshipped,  who are spending their lives traveling the modern reality --- which is quite easy, but also quite boring, to get around....

Why do I think they are wasting their time, however? I'll tell you: I think it is, in fact, a distraction from art. For the truth about art--- the cold hard and mean truth--- is that, at its core, art is and always has been about a rejection of reality, not an embrace. And therefore it's the case that many of the wide traveling artists , who never stop traveling (you know the sort) tend to stop delivering after enough voyaging  has happened for them. I think someone like Rimbaud is maybe the perfect example: He was a great poet right after he left his bedroom , full of inspiration, and arrived to Paris, but then he made, in my opinion, the mistake of getting too curious about the world, and going a step too far: instead of sticking in Paris, he takes off for Africa and, if you read the legend , you'll see he never writes again. He doesn't just go there for a little while. He never return. He becomes obsessed with not just glimpsing Africa but traveling around it as much as he can. So he never writes again....

Why? I think it's simple: Rimbaud ended up getting more interested in reality, and so his art not only suffered--- it actually ended completely. Some of course might find Rimbauds dismissal of poetry once he was a bit older to be fascinating. They might like his story. I do not. I've always found it depressing. I don't like Rimbauds story; in fact, I loathe it. For my goal has always been the same since about 16: I want to produce and leave something behind for each year I am alive, whether it is good or bad. I never want to stop producing. And for the most part I have so far succeeded in this goal....the only thing that has ever really gotten in my way is the proper saving of my own materials. It can sometimes be difficult to make sure everything is saved. Especially when you are unpublished and even in the day of the Internet. Of course, imagine how much harder It would be to save things if I was constsntly traveling!

So now the reader might ask me where do I stand? Do poets and artists  need to travel or do they need not worry of it at all? And here is my idea: artists throughout time were correct to think that travel was necessary to create a good artist--- but no one ever seems to have addressed just how much travel was necessary. Well, in my opinion, I guess you could say you ought to fill the cup up halfway-- and not any further. Constant travelers do not make good art...I live by the idea. The people who do are the ones who find a good place after only a minor bit of traveling. So you might be the sort who starts out in Ohio but then winds up in Paris , and I would call that sort of traveling good, and I bet that artist would be good too--- as Rimbaud was in the beginning--- but leave Paris after five nights, or even after just a year,  for Cairo, or then Shanghai, and then New York and on and on...and I bet you, too, will gradually lose the whole artistic vision you once had. Because you will become polluted by the world of reality ...and once that happens, I believe an artist actually loses touch with the imaginative core. He or she sees too much. And seeing too much is perhaps an even bigger curse than seeing too little.

When I look back on yesterday and I examine the artists that seem to not just be the most intriguing to me but also the ones who have the most mysterious legacies in general, it always seems like they have a bit of a similar tale: They only seem to have ever traveled so far in reality. For example, look even at someone like William Burroughs, who is considered a sort of Rimbaud who traveled far and wide, but even with Burroughs you will see that he only ever really traveled so deeply: he went to Paris, he went to North Africa, London, South America, and certainly New York, but when you really zoom in, you'll see he spent extended time in each place. He made a home. He did not just stay in the city -- like a rock star does --- for three nights. He was in London for an entire decade, for instance, and the same with  New York. When he was in the places, he had a routine, one imagines. He wasn't seeing something new every day. He wasn't a tourist. His imagination, you thus see, did not abandon him. I think he at times came close to losing it--- his production rate is terribly poor for how long he was around, especially how free he was--- but he never lost it completely, because he didn't go that deep. He went to more places than Rimbaud; but Rimbaud was traveling in a time of no cars, and he was, they say, a "constant traveler". In our own time he would be one of these people who spend all of their lives aboard airplanes or trains. Personally, I can think of few things worse and uninspiring.

The guitar player Jack White says that going to New York always leaves him feeling as though "he cannot produce". Why? I'll tell you why: it's because modern 2017 New York is a rather ridiculous city that feels like no where. It's the city of constant travelers, of the intolerable people who are convinced that they have seen everything and now can be impressed by nothing. Not surprisingly , once you cast aside Harlem and the other boroughs -- where real humans live--- no good art of any form has come from New York in decades now. The place is too confused, too polluted, too mad, too fast, too obsessed with reality. Art can no longer be made there. The people who arrive there : they may very well arrive there artists, but the inspiration is probably all drained after a week, traded for the idea that "now you're in New York and that's all you are...."

Smaller cities but also the old world cities, I think, do not really have this issue because most of them are not as well traveled as New York feels. Rome in 2017 feels in some regards like the ends of the earth, and the same can probably be said, to an extent, for a number of French cities that aren't Paris, as well as north Europe, rtc. It can also of course be said for numerous American cities: go to Seattle, Detroit, Dallas, maybe even some demented Deep South city, and you'll probably find more food  to eat than you could in NYC at this point. And the reason is simple: an artist needs peace and quiet. They need to feel disconnected. A constant traveler does not have this, because traveling is always loud, filled with new sights, new confusion, new faces, and so on.

Just imagine : what would Shakespeare have been had he ever traveled as obsessively as it seems Rimbaud did? Had he not had his London? He would have been nothing. He would have been too confused by the World. An artist needs that deep understanding of a place, in a way. They need that hate , in fact, that only staying in a place too long brings. An artist needs to feel that sickness and dread  that comes with knowing some damn rotten road one month too long. For its that exact kick, I am convinced, that will always send the artist hurtling back down the well of inspiration and creation all over again.

So there you have it , artists. A warning lies scrit here for you: Travel too far and too often, and you will lose it all. Stay put, and you will, like God, create your own new world.