An artist's journey into their art is often a lonely one.  Very few are the people who can truly understand what any given artist is trying to communicate through their art, and even fewer are those who can truly grasp what the artist goes through to make that inner inspiration an outward reality.  

Artists put themselves out there and create because...well, because they must or feel like they will die--if not literally, at least figuratively.  It is great if someone gets the work of art.  But it is also just fine if they get something else out of it than what I put into it.  It is amazing the number of times I feel like I have expressed so well something that has come to me, become clear to me, moved me, whatever, and no one gets it the way I was experiencing it at the time I poured that experience into my work.  But if the reader takes something away that is meaningful for him/her, that matters, that gives them an experience that is somehow different for them, then I figure that art is greater than my individual take on it.  If someone finds what I do meaningful, then probably I have not failed.

Maybe it is a bit different for performers than it is for other types of artists.  Performers can only create art in the moment, in front of an audience.  Without the performance, where is the art?  (I just retired as a dancer last year after 10 years of performing, so I clearly grasp the difference between dancing and writing.)  At least I can put words down on a page (or screen) and even without the benefit of an audience, I know that I am engaged in the creation of something that is greater than the consciousness of the ordinary waking mind, something that I am trying to communicate with a presumed audience, though one that is not precisely present.

Writers can be a crazy bunch and perhaps we are not the best judge of each others work.  I find little inspiration in most contemporary writing (at least in English).  Yet I find great inspiration in music, film, theater, dance and the visual arts.  Maybe we are totally blind to the greatness of our fellow artists who grope down similar paths to our own?  I sometimes wonder.