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ART
Got up really early this morning to do some creative work. Being creative first thing in the morning is really good for me. Reminds me of waking up at 4am, putting on a suit, and driving to high school speech competitions, or waking up 6am to hop on the downtown 1 train and head to 8am clown class at The Studio.
Yes. Clown. At 8am.
What this morning did most, though, was get me thinking about mistakes. Something impressed upon creative people all the time is the importance of mistakes.
It’s ok to make mistakes!
or,
Don’t worry about mistakes!
or, my favorite:
THERE ARE NO MISTAKES. EVERYTHING YOU DO IS RIGHT.
Often times, though, this turns out not to be true. A leader or instructor or professor or director often ends up looking for mistakes after telling you it wouldn’t be conceivably possible for you to make any. They proceed anyway, looking for what they perceive as “wrong”. This makes many creative leaders/teachers into liars and bad communicators at best, and intentionally sadistic creative-killers at worst.
This is how a lot of artists end up totally f*cked in the head. An artist opens themselves to the world beyond societal constraint where it is ok to bring forth any and everything from deep inside of themselves, and then told that what they brought was wrong. This is equivalent to telling a deep sea diver: “go and explore the bottom of the ocean! Wander! Bring back whatever you think is interesting!” Then, when they return to the surface, you look at their treasure and say, “Wait, Where’s the Barnacle I wanted? Go back and get my barnacle.”
That is f*cked. We must stop.
It is imperative that teachers and leaders of all kinds (I include every discipline and age group in this since we especially perform this contradiction on kids in schools) learn to communicate expectations BEFORE the magical space of creativity is open for play. Not communicating effectively can be extremely damaging to the purpose of the work and to the psyche of the person of whom the work is asked. If you have expectations, be transparent about them before the work is created, not after.
I can’t tell you the number of times–particularly in my last couple of years of grad school, when we (the students) were invited to get messy, have fun!, don’t worry about outcomes, missteps, etc., and then were lambasted for doing what was asked with ruthless critique. Yes, it may build valuable “muscle” against being crippled by critique, but it may also damage far beyond what appears on the surface.
I am intimately familiar with the space of being terrified to make mistakes. It used to be my reluctant home. Living there is a challenge all on its own, but it’s only made harder when messiness or the unexpected comes to the light, only to be labeled the “wrong.”
So, be aware of your standards, of your aesthetics, of your preferences. Then, be prepared to let them all go when you invite a space that is truly free from mistakes.