Is your art for YOU or THEM? - HITRECORD
Is your art for YOU or THEM?
Joe
Jan 01, 2023
178
1.5k
“Fuck the world,” said Tupac. “Je m’en fous,” said Edith Piaf. Not caring what other people think is a time honored stance for many a badass, especially amongst artists.
Montpellier, France - Tupac Street Art denissetakes
Nov 08, 2021
If you’re reading this, you’ve probably faced the question before—how much should I care about what other people think of my art? It’s a quandary I still wrestle with all the time, searching for that sweet spot between navel gazing and pandering. How to find the balance?
Well, I’ll start with an example of a moment when I cared quite a bit about what other people thought of something I’d made. Spoiler alert: they didn’t like it. But everyone loves a personal rejection story, and I want you to love me, don’t I?
Right, so here we go.
A personal rejection story
I once submitted a short film to the Cannes Film Festival. Now, from my (totally unbiased) perspective, this short film was exceedingly good. The experience of making it had been nothing shy of an existential revelation, leading me to reconsider objective truth, subjective beauty, and my very place in the universe. Plus it was in French. So, I thought, you know, Cannes? N’importe quoi, putain.
It was the end of 2003. Rian Johnson and I had just finished shooting Brick. We were talking about maybe meeting up in Paris in the spring, both of us pitifully eager beaver francophiles. He proposed that I bring a piece of French writing, and he bring an 8mm camera, and we make something together while there. I chose a beautiful and wise children’s poem by renowned poet and screenwriter, Jacques Prévert. Rian brought the celluloid, as promised. We shot for a couple of leisurely afternoons, and then I spent the next year or so of my spare time on the narration, animation, editing, music, etc. It was the definition of a passion project. It’s called Escargots, here you can watch it, but don’t get distracted. We’re talking about whether or not other people’s opinions matter…
0:00/
Mar 15, 2009
When I told Rian about our masterpiece getting rejected from Cannes, he didn’t just offer kind words to comfort my painful throes of self doubt. He recommended a book to me called Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke, which I am now recommending to you. Because within the first few pages of that book, you will find the most deeply compelling version of an artist saying “fuck the world” that I have ever seen:
You ask whether your verses are good. You ask me. You have asked others before. You send them to magazines. You compare them with other poems, and you are disturbed when certain editors reject your efforts. Now (since you have allowed me to advise you) I beg you to give up all that. You are looking outward, and that above all you should not do now. Nobody can counsel and help you, nobody. There is only one single way. Go into yourself. Search for the reason that bids you write; find out whether it is spreading out its roots in the deepest places of your heart, acknowledge to yourself whether you would have to die if it were denied you to write. This above all—ask yourself in the stillest hour of your night: must I write? Delve into yourself for a deep answer. And if this should be affirmative, if you may meet this earnest question with a strong and simple "I must," then build your life according to this necessity; your life even into its most indifferent and slightest hour must be a sign of this urge and a testimony to it.
Inspiring, right? Whenever I read that, it makes me want to be the most me-ish version of my creative self. So the answer to our question could be: “No, it doesn’t matter what other people think of your art. Do it for yourself.” And I could end this essay right here. But personally, while I love what Rilke is saying, I only find this approach works some of the time. Sometimes it’s totally valid to care what other people think, even quite a lot. It depends.
Who is the art for? It’s a good question to ask throughout any creative process. Of course, there can be more than one answer. But here are six possibilities, and how I think about them:
Doing it for yourself
On HITRECORD, one of our Community Core Values is ENJOY THE PROCESS. This is similar to what Rilke was talking about, but a bit different. He was saying that you’ve got to “go into yourself” in order to make good art. But even if we leave aside the end result, I think there’s immense value in doing art just for the joy of doing it.
Today I Will Fly AMountToEverything
May 09, 2013
Resources
Some people meditate, some people play sports, some people tend a garden. It’s a way to find peace or presence or enlightenment, or whatever you want to call it. It’s about dropping into what some psychologists call a flow state. It’s that feeling you get when you’re so absorbed in making something that you lose track of time and suddenly the sun’s coming up.
Is it possible to find this flow AND still care about what other people think? In my experience, yes, but it’s a hell of a lot harder. When I experience peak joy and fulfillment, I’m usually ignoring the rest of the world. In fact, when I’m working on projects that I know other people will see, I often have to sort of trick myself into forgetting about those other people.
This is the mode for which I most often advocate, perhaps because it’s so neglected in today’s creative culture, where advertising-driven platforms give out 24/7 pavlovian rewards for whoever can get the most attention from other people. I also think doing it for yourself is just the best way for an artist to be happy. But of course, I have to admit, it’s not the only way.
Doing it for the audience
This is the other side of the coin. I love the idea of just making my own art for my own self. But I wouldn’t be telling the truth if I didn’t acknowledge that I also love to please an audience.
#hitRECordEccles We are RECording (unpixelated ORIGINAL) Sundance 2012 UncoolMrV
Jan 29, 2012
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I remember the first time I got a laugh. I was five years old, playing the Scarecrow in a community theater production of The Wizard of Oz, and I did a little pratfall, and the audience laughed, and holy shit, that was thrilling. I almost feel bad telling you about it, like I’m endorsing an addictive drug. But it’s true. That feeling of approval is powerful.
However, it’s more than just approval. Playing to an audience challenges me in ways that make my art better. When I put myself in the audience’s shoes, it forces me to find clarity, to really know what I’m saying and why I’m saying it. They don’t have the context of being inside my head. I have to invite them in and show them around. Is there really any art without that transference? Where the story, or the idea, or the feeling has now been communicated from the artist to somebody else?
The funny paradox is, audiences are drawn to artists who aren’t overly concerned with what anybody else thinks. That’s why, as discussed, it looks so cool not to give a fuck. In acting, we talk about “over-acting”, when you’re trying too hard to make the audience understand what you’re feeling, and so your performance comes off false. Sometimes the best way to play to your audience is to ignore them.
Doing it for the people close to you
It’s often looked down upon for an artist’s audience to be “friends and family”. But I think that’s a harmful and narrow-minded stigma. The implication is that if your art isn’t “good”, only your friends or family will see it. But there’s a difference between art being good and art being popular. Personally, of all the things I’ve ever made, some of my absolute favorites have been seen by almost nobody, because I made them just for friends or family.
Familia......Ohana....... my people Bobocakes
Jan 29, 2020
Like, instead of buying somebody a gift for their birthday, have you ever made something for them instead? I’ve done this a bunch. It’s the frickin’ sweetest. Both for the gift receiver and the gift giver. It’s so intimate, and the emotions run so strong. No matter how much a fan might love a movie I’ve been in, their response can never be the same as a close friend or family member connecting to something I’ve made just for them.
On HITRECORD, our community does a Secret Santa project, where people custom make art for one another as holiday gifts. That project has happened every year since 2010, and it was never me or our staff running it. People just do it because it feels really good.
Another example, have you ever made a goofy video with friends? It’s fucking hilarious. No matter how brilliant or well crafted the best comedy might be, it will never make me laugh as hard as I do when I’m being stupid together with my buddies. It’s just funnier when it’s your friends. ( Here’s a goofy video I made with friends years ago. You can watch it, even though it doesn’t make much sense, and I doubt you’d find it very funny. But, no offense, we didn’t make it for you!)
Doing it for money
I consider myself quite lucky to earn my living as an artist. “Lucky” is the operative word, because when it comes to making money as an artist, I think a lot of it just comes down to dumb luck. I don’t want to discourage anybody from pursuing a professional career in art/entertainment. If that’s what you want to do, then do it! But, in my opinion, whether or not you make money isn’t what makes you a good or a true artist.
Feb 25, 2011
Of course, in our culture, “making it” as an artist is often conflated with making money. I think that’s wrong-headed. Everyone has some kind of art inside of them. Everyone can benefit from expressing themselves. Billions upon billions of people. But obviously, there aren’t enough jobs in the entertainment industry for billions of people. Silicon Valley steps in here and boasts that their tech can democratize the “creator economy”, but the reality is that only a minuscule fraction of creators on the internet make any kind of living. So then what? Only us lucky few who make money with our art get to call ourselves real artists? I don’t accept that.
Money may come, and money may go. As I said, I think a lot of that’s just luck. But if we’re seriously talking about art—about digging down into yourself, finding your unique voice, and saying what you’ve got to say—I don’t believe money has much to do with it at all.
Doing it to make a difference
There’s a lot of talk these days about making an “impact”, but is it really possible to change the world with art? Sometimes I feel pretty cynical about that question. Frankly, some of the activist art out there feels more to me like a grab for attention. But not all of it! In my less cynical moments, I believe strongly that for humanity to make progress towards a positive future, there’s a vital role for art and artists to play that nothing and no one else can.
Moments Before Impact strikethrough
May 20, 2019
I’d love to believe I’m making a difference with my art. But am I really? I’ve certainly made a number of things with the intention of making a difference. But did those things really achieve what I intended? Hard to say for sure. What counts as really making a difference?
One could point to art of the anti-war movement in the 60's like Blowin’ In The Wind or Apocalypse Now, or to art of the racial justice movement in our present era like Get Out or Kendrick Lamar’s Alright. Did those pieces single-handedly alter the course of history? No. But I think they pretty clearly contributed to important societal changes.
But making a difference doesn’t have to be part of a socio-political movement, does it? When I think back on all of the movies, music, and books that have had profound impacts on me, most of it wasn’t political. You wouldn’t think of Guns N’ Roses as a very impact-oriented band, but back in 4th grade, when I started a new school, I bonded with some of the other kids there over GNR, and it helped me make new friends. That had a big impact on my life. Does that count as making a difference?
Does art have to reach a large number of people in order to be impactful? Sure, if you’re gonna be quantitative about it, you’d probably have to agree that more people equals greater impact. But say you’ve impacted just one other person, does that not count as making a difference?
I don’t think there’s one right answer here. My view changes day to day, I guess depending on how generous I’m feeling towards myself. But whether I’ve made a significant difference, a small difference, or no difference at all so far, I plan to keep trying until I can’t anymore.
Doing it for your collaborators
When Rilke challenges his young poet pupil to “go into yourself”, he talks quite a bit about solitude. I’m all for a solo mission. Everyone has their own unique mind, and it’s valuable to explore yours with as little as possible influence from the outside. But what happens when you put two unique minds (or three or thirty) together, and find where they connect? What happens when your audience is not just passively consuming your art, but actively creating it together with you?
May 30, 2013
The most obvious example of this is when you’re collaborating in real time. Playing a song together with your band. Or writing a story together with your co-writer. This is a big part of what I love so much about making movies. The feeling of camaraderie on set between so many collaborators, all working in tandem. If one of us fails, we all fail, and for any of us to succeed, we all must.
Now, what if you don’t even know who your collaborators might end up being? Can you still do your art for them? This is what we’ve been experimenting with for years on HITRECORD. It’s perhaps an unorthodox point of view, but try picturing it for a sec. You’re making your art. You ask yourself, who is this art for? Normally, the image you conjure up is a passive audience whose sole response will be to either like it or dislike it. But instead, you picture another artist, someone you might or might not know, someone looking for a bit of inspiration, someone who might take what you’ve done and build on it, or incorporate it into something else of their own.
How does this different set of assumptions change your creative process? If you picture your art being encountered by a potential collaborator, you don’t have to make everything so perfect and presentable. You can leave room for others to jump in. And you can look forward to feedback that’s so much more in depth than what you get from a passive audience.
I always find it exciting to see how somebody else has remixed my art. Even if what they’ve done isn’t my cup of tea, it’s still fascinating. Of course, I’m always curious to know what somebody thought of my art. But just hearing whether they liked it or didn’t like it is kinda binary and boring. And critical reviews, whether positive or negative, can be impersonal and judgey. But when I get to see what somebody else was inspired to make, it tells me so much, in so many more dimensions. And just the fact that my piece provided inspiration enough for somebody else to be creative themselves, gives me that feeling of warm and validating human connection that I think all of us artists are looking for when we embark on any creative process.
So, is this post for ME or YOU?
Turns out, it’s both. Or more completely, it’s all six of the possibilities I just outlined. Well, actually, it’s only five of them:
Did I do it for myself? Yes. It took me a while, because it’s hard to find time during my work days to spend on a somewhat non-professional project like this. But I made the time, mostly because I really had fun doing it.
Did I do it for an audience? Yes. And I hope when you read this, it makes you smile, makes you inspired, and makes you really really like me :o)
Did I do it for people close to me? Well, not strictly so. But I hope they read it. And I’m definitely gonna send this to my high school friends from that weird Russian detective video we made.
Did I do it for money? Nope. No money being made here. Actually, I guess when I post a link to this on twitter, or facebook, they’ll each make a tiny amount of money serving ads to my followers. But I won’t see any of that money.
Did I do it to make a difference? I mean, sure, if I put on my optimist hat, I’d like to think so. I hope for some of you that read this, it’ll help you get more joy, fulfillment, clarity, or at least a bit less anxiety around your own art and creativity.
And did I do it for my collaborators? Yep. I’m posting this to HITRECORD. And implicit in that is an open invitation for anyone and everyone to remix this, or do something inspired by it. Of course, in practicality, anyone can remix anything they find on the internet. But here, that’s the point.
And so, if you're feeling inspired to do something creative for your own damn self, and not for anyone else, check out this WRITING PROMPT: Freewrite for five minutes. Or, if you want to find some other kind of art project people are collaborating on here, check these out.
So thanks for reading, thanks for maybe doing something inspired by it, and thanks again <3
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