Album photoshoot with Aaron Taylor, TriBeca 2012.
ART
I’ve spent so much of my life waiting to be picked. It’s ok. This is the social norm. This is the cultural expectation.
This is what we teach “good” artists to do.
When the clock turned on Sunday, I was surprised at the shift I felt. At 11:59, years of inner work paid off and I left some old, lingering ideas about “artists” behind. I put down the weight of many auditions between 2008 and that last day of 2016. The weight of waiting. Waiting for someone to tell me I was good enough. Waiting to be good enough. Waiting my turn. Waiting for permission.
2011-ish I had a Dreamgirls audition that I felt I blew. I cried for hours afterward that I hadn’t given my best even though the director was abusive in the audition room. I thought it was my fault because I didn’t do my job.
2012. Another where I booked the job, and knowing deep inside of me that I didn’t want the job, I said yes anyway and spent the next year wishing I felt strong enough to say no.
But I was well-trained and socialized to do what made sense for “my career” and to say yes to as many opportunities as possible because “you never know” and be ok with being overworked and abused because one day when you’re famous and have money you can laugh about it with Jimmy Fallon and include a really scathing line about bullies in your Oscar speech.
I did all the things we train artists to do. Wait your turn, but be assertive. Take control, but be amenable. Let the experts and experienced tell you who you are and where you fit. If you want to “make it” shut your mouth and open it only to say “yes, I can do that.”
Wait.
Wait.
Wait to be rewarded. Wait for permission to be yourself. Wait to be validated and then your life can officially begin.
(This is not real life. Your life is coming later. You are not really living. You are waiting to live.)
Be a good artist and do what you’re told. Show up when you’re told. Disappear when you’re told. Make things that others can recognize that aren’t too scary, that are produceable, that are duplicatable. Tell the truth, but in the right ways. Be sellable. Be brandable. Be a brand. Be wild and unpredictable, but only if that’s your brand.
Listen to the heads on the talkshows that reinforce the dominant ideology that the only way to Be as an artist is to work really hard at waiting and waiting and waiting for some school, some agent, some label, some director, some curator, some casting director, some professor, some grant-maker, some committee, some—thing outside of us to tell us its ok to be us and do our thing and make our art.
That’s what “good” artists do: Hang on to mild successes as pseudo-food for their true artistry, waiting for the day when its OK to go full throttle.
GREAT artists are a different story.
Great artists get right to the business of learning to listen to their Genius. They wrestle with it, they get curious about it, they follow it into the dark corners of alleyways that lead nowhere and watch dimensions to other portals open up before them. They take time. They do not rush to fit markets. They strategize, but do not limit. They plan, but do not predict. They let the Genius drive even when it looks crazy on the outside and they’re a little terrified because it looks slick out there and they’d rather rest and wait for someone else to clear the road.
They clear the road.
Great artists do what it takes and hell yeah, they work hard, but they work hard at the right things.
They throw themselves their own parties and other people think they’re crazy because why are you throwing a party, you haven’t been “validated” to party, but great artists don’t care.
They don’t wait.
It took me years to escape the illusory state of waiting to be picked. It was engrained so deeply inside of me to just “work hard” and wait that I circled around my own genius for years. I ignored him and told him I couldn’t play with him because I had to wait for someone else to tell me he was real and give me the resources I needed to access him properly. (Yes, my Genius is male.)
Oh, but this beautiful life kicked my ass and whipped my head around enough times that I finally got it.
The only thing you have to do—the only thing you really have to do is change your mind about who you are and what you’re here to do.
Who are you here to please?
What do you want to worship?
Who/what do you serve?
Who did you come to play for?