The artist’s life is not “The Artist’s Life”

Venice is a labyrinthine landscape — narrow stone walkways twisting alongside jade green canals. On both the occasions in which I was fortunate enough to travel in Venice, I’ve felt a deep calm settle over me.

“I could live here,” I told my friend while we wound our way through the city. How easy it was to imagine a different kind of life while wandering around getting comfortably lost and spending my afternoons drinking Aperol Spritz and consuming copious amounts of pasta — a life in which I could spend my mornings writing in a apartment overlooking the water and my afternoons wandering the streets with a sketchbook, looking for some secret nook of the city to discover.

There is a romantic ideal of The Artist’s Life, the idea that writers, painters, or other creators live with more passion than other people. They may be housed in some grand dilapidated studio, creating their art simply for art’s sake — never mind money or the need for food or what anyone else thinks about it.

Some of this comes from the stories we tell about creators. Van Gogh painting what would later be recognized as masterpieces while impoverished and struggling with mental illness. Fitzgerald and Hemingway romping it up in Paris, drinking and partying while shaping their classic novels.