I find that airports make me feel both very, very big and very, very small. I have spent much of the past year in airports flying to film festivals. I am currently sitting in one on my way to Torino, Italy, where a retrospective on my work is being featured in a film festival. This feels preemptive. I am only thirty-three.

I started out in the news field, and somehow, news always feels important. News feels like—new! News is happening right now, and it’s so important. People are dying.

My Zen teacher often says to me, “Do you use the day, or does the day use you?” Staring at the covers of the New York Times, I feel used by the day. I feel used by life. How have I been sitting in dark rooms contemplating my inner existence when there is so much world to live in?

I am reminded of early artists, shamans who lived on the outskirts of their villages or camps so they could be more deeply connected to the world of the animals, the world of spirits.

We artists are invited to live there, too. Does it feel easy? Does it feel right? Does it feel perfect? It never feels like much of anything but confusing and hard. But that is what living with the spirits is. It’s an invitation to the beyond.

Over the past three years, I have made two feature films. During this time, I would go long periods without any news of the outside world—sometimes on purpose.

I write at an artist residency called The School of Making Thinking, where I like to sit outdoors all day and meditate and then plunge in and not check the Internet at all. And then sometimes just out of necessity when I’m gunning for the Sundance deadline, I bury myself in the ground a bit. And only later hear that miners were trapped underground for six weeks and then rescued, that ISIS is a problem, and that pop musicians I’ve never heard of are much more famous than Britney Spears.

Disconnecting from culture may be foolish, may be backwards, may be a way of living in a narcissistic past. But these are the things I say to myself on a daily basis to admonish myself for not doing something relevant with my life—like writing for a TV show like Community or pounding the ground in Iraq to make brilliant, insightful CNN stories. These things feel exciting, culturally relevant, and inviting. You are part of a world of people who are passionately pursuing ideals and comedy and entertainment and information.

Meanwhile, I have been pursuing personal truth.

The Zen monks I train with are very clear, loving, gentle people. They live near Woodstock, NY, and read the New Yorker and sit in meditation anywhere between three and eleven hours a day, every day. They are living an isolated, maybe backwards, ancient lifestyle in a very modern world, and I am infinitely grateful they exist. They share with me something that I find literally nowhere else—a spiritual path. They inspire me to sit with my inner restlessness, my lack of peace; they inspire me to love myself despite my gluten fixations, my obsessive-compulsive work habits, and my failures at intimacy; and they ask me to challenge myself to be radically open.

This is also what artists do.

Sometimes, after a particularly clarifying session, I ask Ryushin, “Why go back out there? Why not just stay here forever?” And he says, “We train here. Here, we become clear, and when we are clear, we can go out into the world and be a mirror for what it is. We can go out into the world and reveal to the world what is happening, what we see, just by being clear.”

When art is clear, it does this too. It reveals to an audience who the audience is. And what the world is that they live in. I don’t mean: “You are a dynamic, sexually explosive person who lives on a farm.” I mean: “My meaning is as deep as your meaning. My world is as deep as your world. Underneath Twitter is your desire. Underneath the mine is a pit in the center of the world. We are not so close to dying there. We are close to dying always.”

Do I feel as important as an artist? Sometimes. Do I feel like I am failing? Always. Do I feel like I should be doing something else with my life? Well, actually, no. I think I knew early on in life that I wanted to make my life a spiritual journey. I thought this would mean being a warrior—like picking up a stick or a big explosive stick or a huge explosive stick-like machine that could pursue the country’s largest goals—but being a warrior has come to mean pursuing my goals. My personal small goals. It means being a warrior of my consciousness. It means guessing and hoping even when I would rather know absolutely that what I am doing is the right thing.

I don’t know which war is harder.

Appoint yourself the artist-in-residence of your own home—and do your work where you are. Declare a specific place to be your studio. Outline a series of works you will create, perform, or enjoy while in residence.

***

When you begin to think of your work as art,
you will give it more creative thought, more respectful attention, and it will move you further.