Dominique Nahas: On Origins, Authenticity, Courage, Dead-Reckoning: Coming To Terms, Coming To the Point, Allowing "The Event" To Emerge

Unconscious, hence uncreative people believe that success is achieved only by those who are more or less confident, kind of specific and who take a relatively firm stand. This is a humorous way of introducing the critical nature of human drive and commitment to the artist. The very drive towards clarity and consciousness needs no special pleading, however. In the arts it is a lodestone, the philosopher's stone. It allows you to navigate. No one on this earth during your present incarnation as a human being will take you as seriously as you take yourself. No one. No one should or could do your job for you as a creative individual, as a cultural producer. Your task is to craft your own life purpose. To own your life fully and completely. You may ask yourself: what does my cultural production deal with? What are the issues at stake here for me? Take a stand and work it through. It is called an "art-work", after all. Be decisive Do you find it hard at times to be decisive? That's OK. It is part of being human. A big part. Vital art-making often emerges through the artist's forthright, detailed examination of the contours of uncertainties or ambivalence or fears. Learning to probe into the self effectively takes time and practice > going deep is an art form in itself. Becoming articulate about what you see (or can't make out), what puzzles or angers you, what makes you weep or giddy, takes commitment and passion and grit. What are your deepest and most private questions about your inner and outer worlds? Take note of them. Can you allow yourself to go there: where no man or woman has gone before? The entry into the self.

Here is an exercise in the Dead-Reckoning of the self through the wilderness:
Your work is a process, unfolding. Through it you ask: What is the point?
Remember
There is no point (unless you have one to make).
You can't make the point, come to the point or allow the point to come to you without a point of view.
You can't have a point of view without knowing how you got here so as to arrive there.
In finding your way you make your way. This is the event.

We shall not cease from exploration
and the end of all our exploring
will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
[excerpt] Little Gidding V,
Four Quartets- by T.S. Eliot