First, read this post (and leave the song playing in another tab if you so wish).
Done reading?
I want to be a good musician. That's about all I can be with my level of skill. I don't want to be unaccessible or better than everyone else. I'm in actuality not that talented. I'm just playing because it's fun, I enjoy it, and I like paying homage to artists I enjoy by covering their songs. What people don't seem to understand when they see my art or read my stuff or hear me play is that I could go to college for art and still hear the same thing--"I'll never be as good as you." Sure you will! I strongly believe that anything can be taught or picked up if one so desires. But this comparing to someone else you know is silly. The most accomplished artist in the world and the six-year-old with a crayon both create for the same reason. They are compelled to express a viewpoint or an idea bumping around in the confines of their brain and have the means to do so. There really is nothing else to it. It's only when comparisons and feelings of inadequacy enter the picture that things get complicated.
Artists learn to get very good at selective hearing. If the criticism they receive is from someone who views art as "performance-based instruction" to put it in the terms of a poster that depressed me in an elementary school art room, or someone who really doesn't know better and just likes to point out things they find unpleasing to the eye, it goes in and out. That painting/drawing/sculpture/story/song wasn't meant to be pleasing to people. It was meant to express joy or frustration or greif or this burning, aching desire to stand up on a soapbox for a moment and say something of value to the artist. Art is an appeal to the soul.
So I don't need to be skilled. I don't need to blow people away with my words. The truth, even if spoken thousands of times in thousands of simple and complicated ways, will always be well-received. And if I do wind up blowing somebody away, all I hope is that they heard me, and for a moment, they saw me for who I was and were not afraid.
Done reading?
I want to be a good musician. That's about all I can be with my level of skill. I don't want to be unaccessible or better than everyone else. I'm in actuality not that talented. I'm just playing because it's fun, I enjoy it, and I like paying homage to artists I enjoy by covering their songs. What people don't seem to understand when they see my art or read my stuff or hear me play is that I could go to college for art and still hear the same thing--"I'll never be as good as you." Sure you will! I strongly believe that anything can be taught or picked up if one so desires. But this comparing to someone else you know is silly. The most accomplished artist in the world and the six-year-old with a crayon both create for the same reason. They are compelled to express a viewpoint or an idea bumping around in the confines of their brain and have the means to do so. There really is nothing else to it. It's only when comparisons and feelings of inadequacy enter the picture that things get complicated.
Artists learn to get very good at selective hearing. If the criticism they receive is from someone who views art as "performance-based instruction" to put it in the terms of a poster that depressed me in an elementary school art room, or someone who really doesn't know better and just likes to point out things they find unpleasing to the eye, it goes in and out. That painting/drawing/sculpture/story/song wasn't meant to be pleasing to people. It was meant to express joy or frustration or greif or this burning, aching desire to stand up on a soapbox for a moment and say something of value to the artist. Art is an appeal to the soul.
So I don't need to be skilled. I don't need to blow people away with my words. The truth, even if spoken thousands of times in thousands of simple and complicated ways, will always be well-received. And if I do wind up blowing somebody away, all I hope is that they heard me, and for a moment, they saw me for who I was and were not afraid.
