I think that a vocation - artistic or otherwise - creates a place of safety in any kind of chaos. Life can be as bad as it is, but so long as you believe: “on t

I think that a vocation - artistic or otherwise - creates a place of safety in any kind of chaos. Life can be as bad as it is, but so long as you believe: “on the page, things are good”, you can always go to work. I’m not sure if suffering leads to vocation, or if vocation induces neglect of the world that sits outside of that vocation, causing suffering. From my experience (certainly not Poe-tier) the causality is complicated - a cycle, probably starting with a little of both.