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Creative Community: What have I accomplished? (part 1 of 3)
Are great artists born, made or something else? I haven’t read a lot of their biographies, but I have seen a lot of the big artist and writer movies. They always seem to be members of a creative circle. Those creative circles are undoubtedly part of other creative circles that link to other creative circles that radiate out from the nodes of greatness, evenutally, to every artist on Earth. Hopefully.
As a creative person, I believe it’s your responsibility to participate in the community of art.Every artist has moments of doubt. We all wonder why the hell we are doing what we are doing. Beyond the simple joy. Beyond the hope to connect. Beyond the surprises of creation, we wonder at some point: what good does this all do?
As difficult as that question is, I can’t help but think that another question is much more painful: why did I do all this?
One of my all time favorite rap songs is, “No Regrets,” off of Aesop Rock’s album, Labor Days (back before he became incomprehensible). It’s about a woman who very intentionally lived her dream. She wanted to draw. That’s what she did. Actually, the woman in the song seems to have a case of Asperger’s Syndrome, she’s so focused and anti-social. Still, the point is that you can do what you want to do, especially if your dream is to create. You can just exclude things you don’t want as much and do what you really want. If you’ve got the discipline.
All very inspiring, but that’s not all artists want, right? We don’t just want to create. We want it to connect with somebody. As a creator, I hope you like your work. You should like your work. It’s you. But you don’t want to be the only one who likes it, and if you think you are then that might make you hate it.
If we never sell anything. If we never have many readers. If we never get to direct a big play, what good have we done, right?
I don’t mean this question in some sort of hippie’ish, self-righteous, it’s-just-gotta-be-for-you,-man, kind of way, but, I have to ask: is it fame you love or is it Art?
See, I believe that we all want to think that we accomplished something with our creative lives and if we never build an audience we think we failed.
We might fail, though. Most fail that test. If we do fail and keep going and still fail to build a community around our work, then what? That’s why I asked that question, because the next question is this: have you ever helped another artist? Because, if you have, I think you might have contributed to the salubrious creative feedback through the circles of creativity that one day yields a John Lennon or a Wil Eisner.
In this series: