What if you're actually not any good at this?

One of the many many many fears that stops most of us from Making the Thing That Is Not is the fear that we’re not good enough to be doing whatever it is we really really want to do.

We’ve all heard stories about kids being told by teachers, parents, directors, that they’re not any good at art/acting/music/any of it. Many of us have our own version. When I was in middle school, for example, I was told by a person I trusted to know what they were talking about that I could not sing.

It was a wound, for sure, because I loved singing and I loved music. Why this person said this, I don’t know. Perhaps I was just not using breath support; perhaps they were teasing. I didn’t ask.

Your Author, nailing the hard part of Count Almaviva’s Act III aria, back in 2002.

What I did do, though, was pretty much ignore them and went on to become a very good baritone, finishing my era as artistic director at Newnan Community Theatre Company by both directing Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro and singing the Count. So somebody was wrong about my ability to sing.

First of all, why the hell would any adult say this to a kid?

I’ll go further: Why would anyone say this to anyone of any age? It’s unnecessary. It’s cruel. And while the person making this unnecessary judgment may be entirely correct… again, why would you say it?

Second of all, “not good enough” for what? Since it’s an eternal truth that all humans are creative, why would you tell someone to stop doing that? Because you have some kind of standard below which humans are not allowed to create??

Here’s another eternal truth for you — SO WHAT? So what if they’re “no good”? Is Western Civilization™ going to fall because Johnny drew a stupid rabbit wrong? Is the good name of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart besmirched simply because Dale Lyles wrote a mass that no one wants to perform? Or is William Shakespeare turning over in his grave over my setting of his “Sonnet 18”?

No.

As I’ve said before, we need all the bad poetry, bad fiction, bad music, bad art, that we can get. A society which does not encourage/allow the least capable of us to churn out perfectly dreadful dreck will never be a society in which the next Mozart can find a path into their creativity.

Just do it anyway. Do it for humanity. Do it for yourself.