MOWE, Nigeria (VOICE OF NAIJA) – Let’s face it, one of the most crucial aspects of creating things is that they are beyond our control. It’s how other people respond to our work, right?
“Hey buddy, listen to my new singles from my EP that I just dropped.”
“That’s wonderful, Shmuel.”
“You’re a genius.”
“Or, hey buddy, listen to my new singles on my recent EP that I just dropped.
“What? This was terrible.
“Better luck next time.”
It is not the enjoyable, pleasant unfolding of an idea, but this is one of the hardest aspects of being creative. But the eggs are prevented from ever even poking into the nest by the frigid crickets that are encountered: the yes, but of the professional critic; the rejection letter, or even worse, the expectation of rejection.
We may not create things with others in mind, yet applause can be as insufficient as a shrug until a work bounces off another person’s eyelids, vibrates their eardrums, or rearranges some of the cells deep inside their corpus colosseum. We’re not simply looking for a head pat.
We seek a connection, a response, an epiphany—anything that changes the way we perceive what we create or takes it to a deeper level, letting us know that we have touched someone else, disclosed truth to them, or brought to mind something with which we were previously unfamiliar.
This only increases how much we enjoy what we do. We adore it and are in awe of the idea that we served as a conduit for it, allowing it to travel through us before entering the heart of another.
In theory, our creative works are the most accurate representation of our beliefs about the nature of things, especially when someone else sees them, agrees with them, and decides to share them. This alleviates the loneliness of existence.
Then, like a never-ending mirror, the power of the truth is reflected back on itself. And that’s why rejection hurts, because yes, we feel our efforts are wasted, and yes, we don’t matter. And no, we didn’t cause the planet to move at all.
All of that is true, but primarily because we question whether the magic, we discovered is actually magic and whether the revelation we believed to be so profound was really only a solitary flicker of something too small and insufficient to be shared.
Not a full-fledged hallelujah chorus with sympathetic voices joining in, just a whistle in the night. The ego doesn’t take acknowledgment for what it truly is worth.
The contrary is true; it involves breaking down the boundaries between the creator and the audience so that we may all share a common appreciation of something that adds beauty and meaning to the relentless metronome of the day.
Together, we catch a glimpse of the heavens, which were just visible to us at first and are now a canopy over us all. It’s even true of a joke, a shared laugh, or the quick bark of recognition that our minds thought alike.
We were able to briefly escape from this hard ivory prison of our skulls when we realized what the other people had realized.
We like our work more when we hear others appreciate it or, more crucially, that they discovered something in it that made their day a little better. Also, we gain insight into where to go next and what matters in what we’ve done when a reader or viewer has an insight or can share with us information on a certain sentence or thought that touched their heartstrings.
Naturally, the opposite is also true if our work comes across as lame and fails to attract a large audience. We ponder where we went wrong or why we believed something was worthwhile, but it turned out not to be for anyone else.
And finally, I think that everything, even criticism, reactions, and feedback, has its place and time in the creative process. Yet they can only play a significant role once the creative project is complete.
Don’t let your concerns about what others might think distract you from actually creating. Start by creating a music without any thought of where you could end up in order to keep your head down and keep playing. Don’t engage in that internal debate over whether it’s original or good.
Tell that voice, if it appears, that you would be happy to analyze, evaluate, and talk about it afterwards. Poking and prodding the cake after it has come out of the oven won’t help the situation.
Thank you for reading.