Great Art is about being seen while remaining invisible

when intuition breaks through ego

Mikey Madison as Anora

I read a piece of writing from a dear friend of mine the other day and thought: woah, where is she? The art was so pure, the writing so potent, it was as though it could have come from anywhere, from anyone. There wasn’t a trace of her ego, her identity in it. And yet: it was ripping, piercing, potent, memorable in a way I sensed only she could write.

She had created what I call Great Art.

The piece I am talking about is “Wrath, Wrath” by

Sherry Ning

. I said this to her, how I was impressed with how egoless the piece felt, how honest it was while also revealing nothing explicit about her at all. We talked about how writing fiction is appealing because you can say everything you want while sharing nothing about yourself.

I have since been reflecting on what all Great Art does: it reveals while keeping you invisible. It is strikingly raw, honest and vulnerable while saying nothing about you.

I recently watched Anora, the now quite well-known film that ripped through award season victorious nine months after its launch. I became fixated (as I often do) on everything I could learn about the film afterwards, especially the lead actress: Mikey Madison—or, Mikaela Madison Rosberg, her given name.

I was astounded by her performance; she embodied the character she played. I could hardly believe Anora, a sex-worker from Brooklyn who gets entangled in a dramatic romance with a Russian Oligarch, wasn’t who she really was. The movie felt so revealing it was almost invasive. It felt so raw that it felt almost sinful to watch it. Like I was peeking into someone else’s life, knowing secrets I shouldn’t, witnessing deep, guttural emotions I could practically feel as though they were my own.

I was moved by how little of herself made it into the performance, a soft-spoken, sweet and timid girl I later got to know through her interviews, that was silently occupying this loud, bold, impulsive and fierce young woman the story pivoted around.

My mother later told me after going down her own rabbit hole about the movie, that when Mikey Madison watched the film, she said that she saw “no trace of herself in the role.” As soon as I heard that, its truth ripped through my psyche. It was the perfect articulation of what was so remarkable about her performance; it was so revealing, yet there was no trace of her in it at all. She let herself be seen fully, while remaining entirely invisible.

That’s Great Art. It’s the same thing Sherry did in her Wrath piece. To let yourself be fully seen, while remaining hidden.

There is an intellectual thing I often do here in my writing which is not that. I let you see me, but only as much as I want you to see me. I am explaining myself to you. It is controlled, conscious, intentional, cerebral. There are deeper layers, more raw parts of me still, parts that I likely cannot explain even if I tried, because I do not understand them myself. Parts I may never understand about myself.

Because there are parts of all of us that are not meant to be intellectualized, understood, explained. They can only be revealed, through creating Great Art. It penetrates into those gooey, ethereal, ineffable parts of us that exist in a place hardly knowable at all, separate from our ego, our conscious identity. These are the same parts of us that get activated when we witness Great Art. Honest expressions of intuition, of something beneath ego. Of something deeper than the places we let ourselves go most of the time. When we let that part of us speak, it emerges as Great Art. It speaks through us, saying: Look. It lets itself be seen, while keeping us—the persona—hidden.

Great Art accesses this thing we all have inside of us but don’t know how to label, don’t know how to point at. Great Art speaks to parts of us that even we feel distant from. It makes us feel seen, heard, understood, without us having to say anything—do anything—at all. Great Art stops the world. It holds a mirror up to us, but staring back at us in the reflection is not our ego—that persona we adorn with objects and makeup and words and achievements—but some deeper thing, some rawer thing, something we barely feel most of the time, because we’re so busy living inside of our head, stuck behind our eyes, in between our ears—thinking. Great Art quiets the mind, slows you down, makes you pause, makes you feel.

As I write this, I am reminded of an excerpt from Marion Woodman’s “By The Well” tapes that made a great impression on me. She talks about a moment where she had to go to the bank, and in its lobby was a painting: a depiction of ship sinking. It stopped her. She stared at it for a while, and began to cry as she was allowed it to hit her. She describes the emotions it moved in her, the empathy she felt for all the objects and people on board, the feelings they must have been feeling as the ship began to go down.

As this process was unfolding, a staff member from the bank kept trying to rush her out, asking her why she hadn’t left yet, eventually escorting her to the elevator and calling it for her, stirred by his own discomfort at the reaction the art provoked in her. She talks of how numb he must have been, to be walking by this deeply resonant piece of art every day and to have never let it touch him, never let it stop his world, to never let it make him feel.

You need to be sensitive to detect Great Art. There needs to be an openness in you to let it touch you. To let it hold you. To surrender to it in a way that shatters your ego, this identity of yours that you project into the world, that wants to be known and seen in this particular type of way. There needs to be a release, a letting go, even if just for a moment, that lets this art make you feel seen for everything underneath who you want to be seen as. Seen for this sacred being we are beneath the mind, the part of us that dwells deeper, below the layers of armour, of protection, of legibility that we have worked so hard to build up.

Great Art shatters all of that. When someone creates something so honest, so pure, so True, it liberates all of us, even if just a little bit. We all get to feel a little more seen. We all feel our ego collapse for a moment, as the art pierces through us, taking us to a deeper place, a more intuitive, sacred place. In these moments of surrender, of floating above the muck of being a human, all the thoughts and insecurities and projections and the separateness. Great Art lets us all meet each other in the witnessing of this deeper, more tender thing. This place we all have access to but sometimes need to be nudged towards by something that lets us drop the attachments we have, to ourselves, to our thoughts. And to just stand there, tearing up in front of a moment depicted by a painter, by a movie crafted to take you into the eyes of someone else, or by a piece of writing that hits you in the heart instead of the head. And that’s just what witnessing Great Art does to you. Imagine how liberating it feels to create it :)

Get out of your way and create your Great Art:

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Essays you may like if this resonated: don’t let your ideas rot, unblock your mind, reclaim your nature, letting myself be seen

You can learn more about my 1-1 coaching, courses, and other fun things happening in my world on my website. My daily thoughts can be found on Twitter, though I am also trying to share more on Substack Notes (but no promises).

Thanks for reading and for taking the time to consume my own little shreds of art here. It makes me feel seen, and it’s an honour to share what’s coming through me with you. Okay enough gooeyness for now, see you soon!