Always Standing By

How you have to finish the hat
How you watch the rest of the world
From a window while you finish the hat

[…]

That, however you live

There’s a part of you always standing by
Mapping out the sky, finishing a hat
Starting on a hat, finishing a hat
Look, I made a hat
Where there never was a hat

From “Finishing the Hat” from Sunday in the Park With George by Stephen Sondheim

I don’t pretend to be an artist remotely on the level of either Georges Seurat, who is singing these lines in the musical, or Stephen Sondheim, who is arguably “America’s Shakespeare.” I do think, though, that there’s something universal and profound about his description of art-making here.

“Art isn’t easy” is a frequent refrain in Sunday in the Park With George, and it’s true – because art-making demands your whole self, at least as long as you’re making the art. I know I lose myself in creative flow, and my friend Alice said that when she was working in the studio, her family said the apartment could burn down around her and she wouldn’t notice.

I think that being unafraid to dive into this solitary well is a big part of becoming an artist, and I think that choosing how far to go down has a lot to do with the kind of art you would make. Sondheim’s art reflects the depth to which he was willing to “watch the rest of the world from a window.” I take great joy in my family and the non-artistic parts of my life, and I am conscious that I am not willing to sacrifice what I would have to sacrifice to make the profoundest art I’m capable of. I accept that I will make lesser, or less, art in exchange for choosing my family over my studio more often than not.

And even so: there’s often “a part of [me] always standing by, mapping out the sky.” I dream, and I plan, and I love the music I get to make and put as much of myself and my conscious energy into it as I can.

I don’t think that you have to make the sacrifices Seurat makes in this play to make great art. But I do think art-making exists on a spectrum, with the sacrifices and the art in direct relation.