Create for your AUDIENCE

Back in February, I wrote about some advice I gave to a young artist who was struggling over their inability to grow their audience. Short version: I used to moan about the same thing — especially as I’ve grown older and the feeling that time is running out becomes inescapable — but then I had the revelation that whether or not other people are cheering my work, I’ve created something that means something to me. My main audience, my first audience, is myself.

You can read/revisit that post here.

And then not even a month later, Ozan Varol wrote a post about essentially the same thing: That applause you’re waiting for is not why you are MAKING THE THING THAT IS NOT. You’re making that thing because it’s part of you. You should go read that post now.

If I may create a possibly uncomfortable metaphor here, we’re like amoebas or other simple organisms: We have an idea, and that idea grows from us like a polyp until it is large enough, complete enough, to separate from us. When we’ve created a thing that was not there before, we are giving new “life” to our creative ecosystem.

This idea is uncomfortable to us in other ways. Amoebas, after splitting, do not look around for an audience, for applause. They just move on until it’s time to split again. Because we’re not amoebas, though, our innate understanding of the creative process means that we recognize that ABANDONMENT and AUDIENCE are a natural part of that.

And that means we expect applause. We expect, we crave, recognition that we’ve created this thing. After all, isn’t that why we created it?

landscape, by James castle

Both Ozan and I are trying to tell you that it’s not the reason we created it. Remember that Emily Dickinson published only eleven poems in her life; she wrote over eighteen hundred. She wrote them for herself. (And remember this poem?) Remember that Charles Ives never heard most of his music performed. He wrote it because he had to. And remember James Castle? Of course you don’t: he made amazing art in complete obscurity. Remember that most of my music has never had a live performance and probably won’t. Should that stop me from writing more?

I hope you do get applause. I hope your family and friends recognize what you’ve done. I hope you do get some kind of validation for your work. But mostly I hope you’re happy with what you’ve created, because you’re the AUDIENCE that matters.

[I do recommend Ozan Varol’s books, Think Like a Rocket Scientist and Awaken Your Genius. I also will brag that he once profiled me and Lichtenbergianism: procrastination as a creative strategy.]