An artist "ages" when, "by exhaustion of his brain" he decides it is simpler to find directly in life, as though ready-made, what he can express only in his work, what he should have distinguished and repeated by means of his work. The aging artist puts his trust in life, in the "beauty of life," but he gets no more than substitutes for what constitutes art, repetitions that have become mechanical because they are external...In art, substances are spiritualized, media dematerialized.
It is painful and difficult to internalize life to such an extent, and far easier to paint or write merely what one sees, rather than what one experiences. In the quote above, Deleuze is explaining Proust's point, one too easy to forget. How much simpler to choose a drink with X because that is really what life is about...right? For everybody else...certainly. And sometimes that produces something useful. But often it is just an excuse to give up the trouble, as if work really ended at 5PM with a beer at the bar. It doesn't in art...for anyone. Proust makes this point with Swann's failure to produce his work on Vermeer and contrasts it with Marcel's recognition after years of prattering at social gatherings that his great work will only be written if he writes it, about this experience of his, rather than imagining some great work which he never writes for teas, openings, dinners that he attends discussing his writing instead.
It can be helpful to read artists (writers, musicians, painters, sculptors, film makers) sometimes ponderous memoirs and be reminded that the greats suffered to remain young and excited about their work, not to age into the mindless bliss of a simple life.
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