Some thoughts on last week's QOTW

Would the nature of your work change if the number of people experiencing it changed?

I wanted to take a minute and respond to last week’s Question of the Week myself before it fell too far in the past. I spent a lot of time in my twenties and thirties really wanting the number of people experiencing my work to increase, significantly. And not only wanting it to happen, but believing it should – believing that the work “deserved” more attention. (It does not feel great to admit that part).

I was idealistic and dogmatic and probably not very pleasant to be around.

I wasn’t concerned with whether or not a larger audience would change my work. If anything, I was sure it wouldn’t. I was idealistic and dogmatic and probably not very pleasant to be around. And I was also never tested on the issue. My reach never grew much, so my work evolved on its own terms unaffected by spectators.

My feelings around this question have changed a lot over the years. I often think how detrimental it would have been for me if my work had received the kind of attention I wished for when I was young: critical acclaim, international festivals, extensive touring, label support, fans. I can’t imagine I would have been mature enough not to have been seduced by the attention, for my ego to swell out of control, for me to believe the hype, come to expect it, start to depend on it, need it to grow.

Getting a little of what I wanted, but not “enough,” just made everything worse.

I had a taste of each of those things on a very, very miniature scale – the critical recognition and fun shows and everything – but only enough to make me want more, not enough to see the potential downsides. For a while, getting a little of what I wanted, but not “enough,” just made everything worse; not only how I felt about my life, but I have to imagine that negativity manifested in some way in my work. I was constantly disappointed by what my creative career wasn’t, which begs a kind of inverse to the above question: Would the nature of your work change if the number of people experiencing it DID NOT change? To which, I would probably answer yes. (Perhaps next week’s question?)

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to recognize the benefits of working out of the spotlight. While it can be a little deflating to know that that hardly anyone will even notice if you ever release another album or publish a novel, it’s also extremely liberating to work in private with no expectations, no external judgment, no marketplace to be beholden to. The last few songs I wrote were probably the strangest, most unique songs I’ve ever written. The only audience I had a real inclination to share them with was a couple of friends, but I wouldn’t even say I was writing for them. I really felt like I was writing to entertain myself, and I also felt like I achieved that goal. If I had some real sense that there was an audience and critics awaiting my next album, I don’t know what kind of work I’d have to do to reach the place where I could write that freely.

Is there anything wrong with being a hothouse flower?

Maybe that fosters a kind of hothouse flower or solipsistic feel to my work? Maybe truly mature artists are able to wholly be themselves under the microscope of attention? Or maybe it would feel like a fun, exciting challenge to make work that simultaneously pleased my audience AND myself? Maybe I’ll find out someday, or maybe not, but it no longer feels like the primary goal of my creative practice to grow my audience. I’m not opposed to it happening, but I’m not sure I have it in me to do the work necessary for it to happen. That feels like yet another question for another week. (How much of pleasing yourself are you willing to trade in order to please others? Does it matter who those others are?)

I no longer feel entitled to the attention of an audience.

One other thing that has changed over time is that I no longer feel entitled to the attention of an audience. I do feel a certain confidence about some of the work I’ve made – the belief that there are people out there in the world who would enjoy it if they knew about it – but that doesn’t mean it (or I) deserves anything. I recognize that much of what I felt when I was younger was the entitlement of a straight, white man, and while I’m sure I still have plenty of internalized racism to identify and exorcise, I see the critical importance of letting other voices be heard and amplified right now. If that means the quality of my work needs to be much higher than it used to be in order to earn the same attention, that’s probably a good thing all around.