We should want to change the world, but not the whole world.
I make things to communicate with others. I try to give them a feeling or an idea or a moment. I do this because I know that some people can’t communicate the way that they feel. I want to make things that allow people to know what they feel even if they can’t say it by themselves. I have received this from art and it is what I want my art to accomplish.
I can do this in myriad ways. I can be emotionally-focused and write as a heartbroken poet. I can be informative and share the knowledge and information I have about something like a video game. I can be funny and provide levity to those who need it or want it by embracing my comedic side. All of these are types of expression and therefore all of them are my art.
My aim is not to be famous. I have wanted that too much for too long. I have held myself to standards that are unrealistic, comparing what I can do to what is done by people working with larger budgets, larger amounts of time, and larger amounts of experience–Hollywood movies and television, novels by people who are dead and remembered for their entire life’s work, and so on. My aim should not be to eventually be like that. Even if I want it, focusing on it will hold me back from the creative process.
The process of creating is what I want to chase. The excitement of communicating an idea, both from the perspective of expressing something difficult to express and the perspective of communicating that expression to others. If I make a YouTube video and it only gets 58 views, well I should be happy that anyone saw it and that theoretically they enjoyed it. It doesn’t have to shape their lives, it could just be an entertaining thing to have on during their lunch break, or a video they reference before deciding to make an impulse buy of something or another.
My scale of success should just be the communication of the idea to other people, not the amount of people I communicate it to. If I speak something truthfully to only one other person and they get something out of it, then I have changed the world. A communal scale, a small group of people even, should be far more appealing than a global one. It is more fulfilling.
Being an artist or a creator makes it very easy to lose sight of that forest for all those damned trees. But being a good person means planting trees under whose shade you will never sit. We, as people who want to make things and take joy in the creation of those things, should focus on the trees and forget how many even constitutes a forest at all. If we plant a tree, a single tree, we have succeeded in contributing. By this virtue, we have succeeded as artists if we communicate even one idea to one person.
The tragedy of mass media!
The tragedy of mass media and massive consumption is that we so frequently and easily lose track of why we create art at all. Our desire is ultimately to be affirmed in what we are doing. We wish to feel like our work makes a difference, that it matters, and that we will be remembered in some fashion. Constant consumption of media puts us in a position of being affected by numerous tiers of celebrity, from the minor social media influencer to the Hollywood darling. Subconsciously, we begin to believe that fame is the only marker of success and that, by extension, the reason to create is to gather fame. We believe that, should our follower count get high enough, we will finally be justified in doing something creative in our own time. That our creative endeavors will have merit when the crowd around them becomes large enough.
But if the point of art is creation and communication, then fame cannot be a logical measurement of success. Fame is too fleeting and far too random. The trends and desires of the collective, consuming public are so ever-changing and fickle that large companies emply entire teams of people to follow and analyze them in the hopes of staying on top of what is popular. This is not something the average person can do, especially when working in isolation. Nor should it be expected of them, by others OR by themselves.
Fame then, is a block on creativity and not a goal.
In our pursuit of fame, no matter how small or great the amount, we stop creating from an inward place and start creating to satisfy what we perceive to be the desires of others. This is a betrayal of the inner creative that leads us down familiar paths to weary destinations: burnout, frustration, imposter syndrome, and other forms of misery. A symptom of this is so-called “writer’s block,” or any discipline-agnostic rephrasing of it, which is a condition that does not exist. Lacking an idea will never keep you from creating. Sometimes the point of creating is to work through the trouble of this “block” to find whatever we can on the other side, or to learn more about our craft by applying it during a time of struggle and hardship.
What we lose sight of when our creative endeavors become underscored by numbers of eyes and dollars is the communal aspect of communication. We believe that unless we speak to the largest possible audience, we may not speak at all. But this is a fallacy in itself, a trick we use to keep ourselves from creating.
The mission is not to become famous.
The mission is not to become financially sound in our creation.
The mission is to create because we are compelled to.
The mission is to create because we can provide something for someone.
This is the inherently human core of being creative. In the same way the sciences explain phenomena in the universe that operate on a mathematical basis, the humanities explain phenomena that operate on a human basis. A basis that is difficult to articulate or ascribe to any one category or another. Sometimes we call it “spiritual,” sometimes we call it “the great unknown.” Our job as creatives is to navigate it as best we can and describe it through our work so that others who cannot now (or possibly ever) navigate it themselves can find kinship through the work we create. If this is done with one person or one million people, it is work regardless. And in so being, is worthwhile.