(Fish Being Chased Down by Prehistoric Beast drawn by the Wondrous and Glorious, El Cid, 2015)
I have experienced times in my life where I am scrambling to make ends meet, working hard to get my basic needs met, trying desperately trying to connect point A to point B. There have been other times in my life where everything is comfortable. I have the basic needs met (food, shelter, water, and clothing); I maintain a social life with friends and family; once that security net is created, I have the ability to spend entire days and weeks devoted to my comic creating.
But Life is a funny thing. Over this Lifetime, I have collected photographs and memories of my life, the people I have met, and the places I have been, and I realized one major theme:
Sometimes, it is when we are at our Hungriest that we are able to follow our most Important dreams.
The year I signed up to start hosting my webcomic on Drunk Duck’s Website, I was in my third year of college. I probably had about fifteen dollars for my food budget to spread out for one week, that was a time of my life that I was seriously living paycheck to paycheck. But I was not even thinking too much about food or partying at that time because coming back to my apartment every night and getting to draw or work on my comic was the best thing I was ever able to focus all of my attention toward, on a daily basis.
Going back to this idea of Hunger fueling Creativity, it is important to note that from what I have experienced in my own life, is that I have experienced the greatest richness out of life at certain times when I did not even have my basic needs completely met. Looking back, the times I was hungriest were also the Best times of my Life.
I hope everyone votes for the 2020 Drunk Duck Awards!!! 🤍🤍🤍
Link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1QQk5VFGEkNqiIMxmnWainotcenl3-oRiQQetxnHFq1Q/
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Dear Ducks,
Hello, how is everything going out there, I am just reaching out to our whole beloved community of comic creators to see how everyone is doing. Is everyone hopefully getting their basic needs met? Let us know in the comments!
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Hunger Fuels Creativity
kawaiidaigakusei at 12:00AM, July 20, 2020
5 likes!
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kawaiidaigakusei at 4:56PM, July 21, 2020
@hushicho—thank you for your response, it does make for a more interesting discussion. It is true that the idea of the “starving artist” is a well known stereotype. In my experience, being a starving artist is fuel for the fire. I once worked with a professional artist who painted a series of landscapes of a junkyard, a city dump. His works were as expressive and romanticized as J. M. W. Turner’s painting, The Slave Ship. A person who can see a masterpiece where others see garbage is fueled by much more than food.
hushicho at 3:43PM, July 21, 2020
I find this questionable and a bit problematic. Certainly, when all we have is creative outlets, that's what we look to because we have nothing else. However, I don't think it's really healthy to look at it fondly, because we should always try to have our fundamental needs as living, thinking human beings filled -- presenting it in a fond way can make us glorify ourselves being oppressed and unfulfilled, unsupported and frankly abused by the society surrounding us. I think we can and should, instead, work to create in better situations and never be too complacent, especially when our needs are not being met. We should not be fond of the starving artist role or mentality.
kawaiidaigakusei at 6:22PM, July 20, 2020
@Banes, it is difficult to get perspective in the short-term when you have never seen or experienced the long-term. Looking backwards allows me to realize everything, the good and bad all happen for a reason. 🙂
Banes at 2:47PM, July 20, 2020
Lotta truth to this! I sometimes feel I've wasted those harder times in a way, by worrying and not realizing those challenging days can be an excellent boost to letting go of the irrelevancies and seeing what really matters to you.
Avart at 11:15AM, July 20, 2020
OMG! Love those songs!!
kawaiidaigakusei at 10:10AM, July 20, 2020
@Avart, this quarantine brought back a very unexpected former creative hobby back—playing the piano solely for myself and for fun. Music is back in my life. Now it is time to find the notes to “Paranoid Android” and “House of Cards” and play away all the pain I feel in the world these days.
Avart at 10:01AM, July 20, 2020
You're totally right @kawaii, we often are driven by things that aren't important and forget about those little things that 'fuel' our engine to make big (and important) things. Thanks for your amazing words. :)
kawaiidaigakusei at 4:53AM, July 20, 2020
Thank you Andreas Helixfinger for sharing your thoughts on this, it is fascinating! It sounds like everything will be smooth sailing as far as the social interaction and food front. I have been doing well on my end, I miss going on a trip to another country so I can satisfy my wanderlust cravings. I have been spending the last two to three weeks really working and building my online brand through social media. It is really the most convenient time to really dive into the digital world and what it has to offer. Everyday, I climb a little further up on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and I ask myself if I needed to give myself an extended break like this before we were all forced to stop everything at once.
Andreas_Helixfinger at 4:06AM, July 20, 2020
Personally I'm having my basic needs met fairly well right now. I guess I have the fortune to live in a place where the situation is not as severe as I figure it may be in other places of the world. I've been through more tighter times then this I can fairly say. I feel like I've always kept my creative hunger going. The hunger to write especially. It is like a natural ferocity that has evolved into a relentless obssession in my life. There have been times I've outright neglected my hunger for food and I don't have a great need of any social interaction. There have been times when I've struggled to convince myself to date again, must have been ten years or so since me and my ex broke up, and yet I fail again and again to do so. I much rather keep writing and drawing everyday then seeing other people. Maybe its an unhealthy habit, but I find myself just hard-wired to be this way. Hope things are as okay as can be on your part, Kawaii👍