Are You an Artist If No One Sees It?

A friend once asked me, “Are you an artist if no one sees it?”

The question landed like a koan—sharp, simple, unsettling. It was one of those questions you don’t so much answer as live with, letting it trail through your days like a shadow or a companion—or, as the poet Rainer Maria Rilke said, a question you live yourself into.

I’ve sat with it for weeks. Still sitting.

As a performer, writer, and actor with a public presence, I live in a paradox. On one hand, I would create even if no one paid me or noticed. On the other, I do want to be witnessed, celebrated, clapped for. There’s a part of me that longs to be mirrored in others’ eyes.

Yet meditation practice has shown me another truth: A freedom comes when I can offer myself my own recognition, when I let go of outcome and create for creation’s sake. My work matters even if it’s never consumed. I am enough even when unseen.

Some days I feel that. Other days, my ego shouts: Go bigger. Make more. Be more. The cushion says release, but the world says accumulate.

Practice has taught me these parts of myself don’t have to be in conflict. They can bow to one another, live in the same body. A director once told me, “Bring the dharma to the stage, to the pen. Don’t leave it on the cushion after your morning sit.” That was the beginning of a quiet integration, where my creative and spiritual selves began to collaborate.

After all, the creative process isn’t so different from practice. Both are slow, relational, unfolding in their own time. Meditation is a dialogue between breath and thought, presence and distraction. Making art is the same—an attentive listening for what wants to emerge.

I no longer believe in separating the spiritual self from the creative self. Both are expressions. Both are offerings. Both require devotion. Renunciation, in this sense, is not abandonment but relationship.

For me, renunciation means showing up to write, perform, meditate—not because it will be seen, celebrated, or monetized, but because it is the most honest expression of this life. It’s trusting that a poem written in a notebook and never read aloud still matters.

My homegirl, a director and author, has a jar in her house full of good ideas written on colorful Post-its. For her, it isn’t about birthing each one into the world. It’s about the abundance of good ideas, the abundance of colorful genius she gets to walk by every day. The act itself of receiving the idea and putting it in the jar is enough.

Worth isn’t measured in clicks, likes, or page views. Emptiness is not a void. It isn’t nothingness, but rather a fullness, a spaciousness that is full of possibility. Each breath is complete. Sweeping the floor with attention is an act of beauty, so is creating something no one else will ever see.

This is not easy to remember. The algorithm rewards visibility, not presence. If you didn’t post it, did it happen? So, I wrestle. I want to be content (the feeling), not just content (the thing we scroll through). I chase the yes, I make lists, I crave the next thing. Practice doesn’t erase these impulses, yet it teaches me to look beneath them.

When I say I want the role, the publication, the recognition, what do I really want? Often, it’s not the thing itself, but a feeling: peace, joy, belonging. Practice reminds me that feelings don’t come from things. Feelings arise and pass on their own, shaped by conditions we can’t control. I’ve felt deep peace in parking lots. I’ve felt anxiety at the height of achievement.

Perhaps real renunciation is not giving things up per se, rather it’s not needing things in order to feel whole. It’s seeing that we already are whole. This moment, this breath, this act of creation is enough. From that place, I can keep creating, not for fame or legacy, but as practice, as remembering.

I think of monks making sand mandalas. Hours, days, weeks of intricate work, only to sweep it away. No photoshoots, no followers gained. Just the act. Just the breath. Just the offering.

I still post, still hope, still crave the yes. But I’m learning to notice when I cling. We all have a hungry ghost inside of us, a being suffering from insatiable desires. I’m learning to notice and love the hungry ghost inside of me and to offer myself compassion instead of judgment.

I am not my follower count or my last job. I am my attention. I am my devotion. And in that devotion is a freedom I never expected: the freedom to fail, to be messy, to be enough without proof. To be what I am. Not pushing away, not grasping. Just this.