Art & Fear Chapter 4 and Shower Thoughts
“Art is often made in abandonment, emerging unbidden in moments of selfless rapport with the materials and ideas we care about. In such moments we leave no space for others. That’s probably as it should be. Art, after all, rarely emerges from committees. But while others’ reactions need not cause problems for the artist, they usually do.” [Page 37]
The simple idea of any reaction to my artwork, causes me problems. Big ones. The authors go on to write that we carry real and imagined critics with us constantly. And they’re right. But I don’t care so much about the critique. I don’t care if they like it, love it, feel indifferent to it, hate it. I carry so much of everything else. I’m more worried they’ll see it and know it. And scarier yet, ask about it. I want to leave it in the world and I want it to be left unaddressed, at least by those who know me well. And for those fears, and for those reasons, lately, the work I create, I can’t seem to post.
“But for most art there is no client, and in making it you lay bare a truth you perhaps never anticipated: that by your very contact with what you love, you have exposed yourself to the world.” [Page 38]
“You have exposed yourself to the world.” It’s so weird to be an artist. I have this unbearable need to get the work out of my system and out into the world, so it doesn’t linger with me a second longer. I can’t describe it any other way, it has to get out. But I fear a fallout from it’s emergence. I want my art to be seen, exist. I just wish to remain unseen. A true paradox.
“The lesson here is simply that courting approval, even that of peers, puts a dangerous amount of power in the hands of the audience. Worse yet, the audience is seldom in a position to grant (or withhold) approval on the one issue that really counts — namely, whether or not you’re making progress in your work. They’re in a good position to comment on how they’re moved (or challenged or entertained) by the finished product, but have little knowledge or interest in your process. Audience comes later. The only pure communication is between you and your work.” [Page 47]
I don’t want to worry about the audience anymore. I don’t want the outside world to hold any power over what I wish to create. I don’t want to censor my work because it feels too true, too much, too dark, too anything. I want to make what I want to. Say what I want to. I’m tired of trying to make everything fit into these little boxes all the time. So I’m torn between wanting to shield the circle of those I know from my artwork. To separate the Claire they know from the Claire who creates. But we’re the same.
2/2026 // shower thoughts, i’m cleaning my head out
Our scene opens. The narrator speaks: The hardest part wasn’t what she thought it would be.
The camera pans in, the rainwater shower head makes frantic pitter patter sounds on the fiberglass walls and floor. As the subject sits still, the water pours and pours over the subject.
The narrator explains: Saying goodbye in silence wasn’t the hardest part. Existing as it slipped away wasn’t either. The still, dead air wasn’t the hardest part, nor was the familiar depths of depression, revisiting in layers.
A song by Ethansroom called “Shower Thoughts” begins to fade in under the narrator’s words:
It was the undeniable little scrap of hope she clung to, against all better advice to just let it go. Against all her better judgement, holding onto it, like cupping water in your hands, refusing to let it go as it dissolved.
It slipped, silently, without permission, as so many things do. It said no goodbyes, it closed no door. She relinquished it, under the weight of depression, without even knowing. It went, without a witness. The hardest part wasn’t the endless abyss of numbness. It wasn’t the revisiting of the crushing, black void. It wasn’t even the tortured “what if’s”. All these things weren’t the hardest part.
The camera focuses on the water, the drops that slowly slide down the walls of the fiberglass as the subject covers her face in her hands with one long sigh. The narrator finally tells you what, in fact, was the hardest part: The hardest part, you see, was waking up one morning and knowing deep in her core that it had all gone, a very long time ago and that awful, stubborn and beautiful little kernel of hope prevented her from knowing it had left. The hardest part was it slipping away so quietly, under all that weight. Robbing her of the knowledge that it was already gone, robbing her of feeling it, robbing her of feeling anything at all.
The scene cuts to black and the song ends. The narrator yields the final words: The hardest part wasn’t what she thought it would be. The hardest part was realizing what it took and not knowing when it had left.