A call to creative action
Words & images © Paul Ransom
To my fellow makers & creators,
Most of you, like me, will be working in the dark. Unheralded. With little or no audience. Nor much realistic hope of one.
In a world that measures success in dollars and followers – and that ascribes particular merit to such success – it can be tempting to chase the numbers. Either that, or give up. I can plead guilty on both counts.
But I have recovered, and here I am sending this open letter, posting it on the off chance it might find you. For I wish for you the same inexhaustible source of drive and desire that I have been lucky enough to find. I want you to keep doing what you do…and loving it. Not for the accolades, nor as heroic martyr fantasy. Rather, for the undiluted joy of making.
We have an ever-diminishing fund of time at our disposal, and no matter what we do (or don’t) we will all – A list and Z grade alike – be equally dead. In the meantime, we have a choice. As creatives, as human beings, we can decide where to put our effort. Our focus. It sounds simple, but for those of us who wish to make art, change the game, or bring fresh insight, it can be the difference between inspiration and frustration. Freedom and failure.
I use the word failure deliberately, just as I have success, because they may be variously defined. Yet, despite this, the loudest cultural megaphones continue to bracket them in terms of popularity, profitability and algorithmically mandated metrics. Like, share, subscribe.
Even the most resilient and determined of us can find such yardsticks difficult to ignore. To witness all your hard work vanishing into a fog of silence, a mere blip in the blogosphere, can be an acid test of self-belief and resolve.
Or not.
Although it feels cliché to suggest that we can switch out of the standard achievement mindset by recalibrating what success means, it nonetheless remains true. Extricating ourselves from the narrow channels of marketing-think and bean counting, and from the endless attention seeking churn of big tech playlists is a no-brainer. We already know this shit is toxic. Addictively so.
Our challenge is to make the cliché real. To break the habit of just saying no to the touch point mafia, and actually meaning it. Practising it. Living it.
Here we return to the issue of focus. We can spend our energy railing at the machine, virtuously demanding that the world change its ways, or we can dial down the dramas of genius and grievance and dissolve our own judgements – which are so often more punitive and unforgiving than anything visited upon us by rejection letters and low view stats.
Surrendering the need for success begins with the surrender of our own success measures. As long as our pass mark is contingent on an outcome we do not control – or predicated on the lottery-win unlikelihood of fame, acclaim, etcetera – we condemn ourselves to a nigh inevitable sense of shortfall.
Likewise, if the worth of our work is calculated as a percentage of a perfected ideal – or assessed as the distance from an image of who we tell ourselves we have to be – we are likely to be left with the crush of perceived failure. In turn, this may morph into bitterness, even self-loathing.
From where I sit, this scans more as scam than sound investment. Either that, or a call to action. An invitation to change the prism and get out of prison.
To illustrate, let’s use a dance metaphor. We can either fixate on good lines, great technique and flawless timing, or we can reside in the pure joy of movement. In how it feels, rather than how it looks or might be judged by others. The dance that is felt is always beautiful. The drive to dance, and the rewards of it, are located in the movement itself, and are not dependent on how good or bad we think we look in the selfie video.
Surrender the judgement.
Surrender the outcome.
Just dance.
The same can be said for book writing, picture painting and game building. Just as it can for restoring furniture, tending gardens, and a thousand other passionate pursuits. Surrender is here for all of us. It is not exclusive.
If that sounds a bit woo, allow me to offer you a personal example. Two months ago I started another book project. Even before the first keystroke, I had accepted that it would probably not find a publisher, almost certainly not be a breakout hit and, in all likelihood, not end up being the book I first envisioned. In fact, I may end up not liking it, nor even finishing it. None of that matters. Because I have already experienced the joy and the beauty of spending time with my art. The pay-offs are already banked. And there is not a dismissive literary agent or underwhelmed early draft reader who can take that away from me.
Same goes for this post.
This is what it feels like to surrender the need for success. Liberation. Joy. A deep sense of personally authored inspiration. The desire to say yes in a world that yawns don’t bother. Like Sisyphus pushing the rock uphill; not just because it’s an act of defiance but because the act is an affirmation, a process of iterative uncovering. This is what I want. This is the ark of meaning.
Perhaps that strikes you as an excuse, a way for me to wash away the accrued disappointment of not being meritorious enough to crack it – maybe it is – but my goal here isn’t to be right, it’s to find a sustainable way to keep working.
Why? Because my practise puts me in flow. It gives me energy and grants me a sense of connection; sometimes even ecstasy and revelation.
But here’s the kicker. Even this I could surrender. My work is not who I am. It is just a way to spend time. I love it profoundly. Truly, madly, deeply. Enough to let it go.
All of which cuts to motivation. Reasons to keep going. When we decouple our passion projects from socially visible, financially denominated rulers of success – and from personal mantras of perfectionism, crusade or noble suffering – we clear a space for freedom of choice. From there we can make work fearlessly, because the act of making is where the ‘success’ is. Meaning, healing, self-actualisation. Whatever you want to call it. Or simply just because.
Or indeed not. For we are also free to stop.
PS: Elsewhere on this site I have opined on related themes, which you are welcome to peruse at your leisure.
As If You Were Listening 