Marc Maron on Arriving

I love Marc Maron. There, I said it. I’ve featured the emotionally open, yet cynical comedian and podcast host’s wise words before on this blog and I pretty much will forever, as long he keep being so darn inspiring. His recent chat on the excellent Hazlitt’s “The Arcade” podcast provided some illuminating insight that I thought would be a worth a share with you all.

Maron and host  Anshuman Iddamsetty discussed the fear and anxiety that the artist must overcome when choosing the creative life. Said Maron:

“When you choose to the live of somebody that wants to express themselves, one way or another, the questions that you have or the crossroads that you come to are, ‘am I going to make it as an artist? Am I going to able to make a living as an artist? Is what I’m doing going to be important to anybody?’ It’s weird because go, ‘you gotta enjoy the journey’ or ‘you gotta like what you’re doing and be doing it for yourself.’ It’s a rare person that can really accept that because there’s some sort of surrender to it.”

They went on to talk about Maron’s concept of “coming into himself” or arriving as the person he is, for lack of a better word, meant to be. He explains how there is no road map for an artist to land at a place where he or she feels right, or comfortable, but, as you’ll read below, he wishes there were:.

“It sort of saddens me that I can’t give people a tutorial of the steps one has to take, the sad thing about pounding your head against the wall and giving up your life for a dream is that it might not happen, and I didn’t think it would happen for me and I consider myself very fortunate that I’m ready for whatever is happening to happen, it’s happening on a level I can handle. I do get stuck though. So, yes I feel like I’ve arrived at some acceptable version of myself that i think is authentic, but problems persist.”

Maron echoes many thoughts that have been banging around in my skull lately. What’s it take be the creative person that I want to be? When does it feel good? When have I made it? When? When? When? Why? Why? Why? How? How? How?

The short answer is, I have no idea. But knowing that Maron, whom, as previously stated, I greatly admire, has only now discovered that he’s “arrived” does give me hope.

It might take months, years, decades, whatever, to be the artist you’re meant to be, but with persistence, consistency, luck, perspective, and a whole bunch of other self-helpy words, you might actually feel okay. And that would be okay.

So what do you think? How are you feeling? How’s your journey going? Have you “come into yourself”? Let us know in the comments.

[Source: The Arcade]