I curated my life to be an expression of my pain. By creating somebody that I felt was stronger than me.

Lady Gaga

I love this quote by Lady Gaga. A lot of people look at her art and life and see only the glamor and artifice they associate with this persona she’s created over her career. What they don’t realize is that many people who lead creative lives, who create art as a means of survival, who depend on it for their living, channel everything they have into their art. So you’re not just getting the joy and the wonder that all of us who are blessed enough to spend time on this planet enjoy, but you’re also getting the trauma and the deeply-held secrets and the pain — so much pain — that we mask and subsume otherwise we’d never leave our rooms again.

I think art forces us to be braver. It forces us to become the best versions of ourselves that we can be. And in the times we can’t be that best version, when we can’t take the high road, when we have to forego that dream of something better, it forces us to look that in the eye — and that in itself is a gift.

Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please like, comment, follow, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at fred.slusher@thevoraciousbibliophile.com or catch me on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.