Day 0378

I worked hard on my painting today, which ultimately I feel good about. Went through a lot of anguish. Trying to master myself to make myself produce work. Sick of the apprehension of my own averageness and want to transmute my stubbornness, vanity, pride into works of art. This is the egoism that drives the creative endeavour, which Orwell wrote about:

I think there are four great motives for writing, at any rate for writing prose. They exist in different degrees in every writer, and in any one writer the proportions will vary from time to time, according to the atmosphere in which he is living. They are:

(i) Sheer egoism. Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on the grown-ups who snubbed you in childhood, etc., etc. It is humbug to pretend this is not a motive, and a strong one. Writers share this characteristic with scientists, artists, politicians, lawyers, soldiers, successful businessmen — in short, with the whole top crust of humanity. The great mass of human beings are not acutely selfish. After the age of about thirty they almost abandon the sense of being individuals at all — and live chiefly for others, or are simply smothered under drudgery. But there is also the minority of gifted, willful people who are determined to live their own lives to the end, and writers belong in this class. Serious writers, I should say, are on the whole more vain and self-centered than journalists, though less interested in money.
George Orwell

Have been listening to Dead Souls by Gogol whilst painting today. Plot and character-driven so far, less embedded grand philosophising than the other Russian giants, and unexpectedly playful.

Over-ate and didn't leave the house. Rustication is lonely after Paris.