Making Crooked Places Straight

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Guest Blog by Chris Dignan

Fundamentally, I am an artist, creator, free thinker and musician at the core. I am a kind spirit, a child of the enlightenment, concerned with issues of humanity, community and solidarity. I have however now spent roughly 10 years at war with the notion of truly embodying and expressing such ideology and creative freedoms, by turning them into a career, a humble life of an artisan.

A life that I’m aware may not be the greatest of decisions financially, but an unbelievably rewarding one emotionally. And why of course has there been inner conflict? Because what my society tells me I should value (money) and what I value (art and free thought) have been at odds with one another for years.

And until recently the status quo had been waging a war on my true nature with deplorable results. My story if it had a lengthy headline would read, “Boy with delusions of grandeur, moves to big city to attempt to infiltrate it with mansions of creativity and thought, only to become again victim to artificial and external contrivances.”

I moved to Toronto one year ago this September to pursue a career in the arts, and it has taken me just as long to become lost once again amidst the same conflicting inner dialogue that had plagued me for a decade prior. Only this time there is an end in sight. A closing chapter, in a book riddled with conundrum and hypocrisy, written by an author afflicted with superficiality who all the while longed for simplicity.

And it was written with the help of two men, Vilhelm von Humboldt and Khalid Mokhtarzada.

The philosopher Wilhelm von Humboldt wrote the following words in his paper, On the Limits of State Action, in 1791. “The state tends to make man an instrument to serve it’s arbitrary ends overlooking his individual purposes. And since man is in his essence a free, searching, self perfecting being, it follows that the state is a profoundly anti-human institution, that is it’s actions, and existence are ultimately incompatible with the full harmonious development of human potential in it’s richest diversity.” He goes on to write.

“Mans essential attribute is his freedom. To inquire and to create, these are the centres around which all human pursuits more or less directly revolve. All morale cultures spring solely and immediately from the inner life of the soul and can never be produced by external and artificial contrivances.”

I have lived with those words worshiping them like gospel for a decade, ingraining them like a mantra, but forgetting about them in times of action, times where monetary decision making and financial planning appeared to play what I thought was a far more important role. And in turn my creative and artistic spirit again went unsatisfied while I pursued a secure financial future, telling myself that if I turn my back on creativity now, that one day I will be in a position financially where I can make my vocation my career, rationalizing that I will remain happy so long as I continue to experience creativity through hobby.

Khalid Mokhtarzada spoke to me in 2010 while we were having a dialogue about our lives and our vocations the following words.

“I am a creative man, this is my passion. If I am going to experience any success in this world I want it to be through the creative process, and I know the universe wants it to be through the creative process as well. And if I have faith, and I work hard at expressing myself as an artist, one day I will experience the rewards of my honesty and hard work. But most importantly, I will undoubtedly be happy along my journey.”

These two men although living in two entirely different worlds shared one common understanding, the human spirit. I’ve understood the human spirit as well, but to see it manifested in front of my eyes by a man who faced much the same internal dialogue, and made the decision that I had been shying away from, and that was to throw caution to the wind in order to have complete creative control over his mind and ultimately his destiny, is all the evidence and inspiration I need to keep faith and take my first steps in my own direction.

No longer will I look at an artistic life through such a pessimistic filter, and neither should anyone else, we are all artists.

It is one thing to hold on to thoughts, ideals, philosophies, desires. It is another to live them out. Sometimes this can be a great challenge, but it will always be a great lesson, regardless of how it plays itself out. These words are my first step in attempting to shed my old skin, the opportunity to write them was given to me by two individuals.

Khalid Mokhtarzada whom I consider my soul brother, and Lannie Le whom I consider my soul sister. Its has been a great gift befriending them, they are like minded and creative individuals like myself. Both of them have taught me a great deal about faith, and I will forever be indebted to them because of it. They have given me a creative outlet, an opportunity to write for their business. A responsibility I will not take lightly.