Crackers and creative confidence
Last night while drinking champagne and eating crackers with soft cheese and slices of fresh tomato (topped with ground salt and black pepper), my friend Tonia and I got to chatting about bell-ringers and how they manage to stop those giant bells from tolling past the designated number on any given hour. (Do you know how they do it?)
Creatively inspired by the champagne and the lateness of the hour, we came up with all kinds of theories, ranging from shoving some kind of giant feather duster up in between the clapper* and the inside of the bell, to having a second bell-ringer whose job it was to catch hold of the bell as it swung and then hold it there (perilously, in our imaginings, tilting over the edge of a bell-tower while holding back a giant brass bell with all their apparently-considerable strength). I have my suspicions that our theories would not hold water in a peer-reviewed study, but they filled our evening with laughter.
And somewhere in the midst of all this my brain, probably once again influenced by the champagne and the late night, made the leap from creative theorising on bell-ringers to creative inspiration in general to Quasimodo and the way jobs that were once intensely private (like bell-ringers in Notre Dame) were now as open to the world as anyone else (thanks to the Internet and in particular social media) to the way many artists are now using this phenomenon to practise in public and build a tribe or community of like-minded supporters around them.
Isn’t the Internet amazing?
And here’s something else we talked about. That everyone Tonia or I had ever known or met had had misgivings about sharing their creative work in public. Our Inner Critics not only make nasty comments that put us down and leave our confidence in tatters… they are also experts at isolating us and making us feel as though we are the only unworthy ones in the room. But the two truths are: 1) none of us is unworthy, and 2) at some time or another, all of us feel unworthy.
I mean, everyone.
In 1908, Monet destroyed at least 15 of his major works just before they were due to be exhibited in the Durand-Ruel gallery
Franz Kafka burned 90 percent of his writings and instructed in his Will that the rest was to be burned unread. The only reason we have Kafka's works today is because his friend ignored his wishes
Billy Joel said of his 1989 hit We Didn’t Start the Fire that “That melody is horrendous. It’s like a mosquito droning. It’s one of the worst melodies I’ve ever written.”
Woody Allen hated his classic movie Manhattan so much that he begged United Artists not to release it, and even offered to do another movie for free just to stop it from being released
Harper Lee tossed the manuscript for one of the world's most beloved novels, To Kill a Mockingbird, out the window
I once read that Picasso had been banned from certain galleries for trying to ‘fix’ his own paintings
The only reason we have these great works today is because the artists ultimately shared their work, despite their misgivings. (Even Kafka refrained from burning that final 10 percent of his work).
I don’t really have a lot more to say about this subject, except to wave my pom-poms and cheer you on. You’ve got this! Don’t hold your beautiful, creative work back, even if it’s not ready yet. Even if it’s not perfect. Let’s all celebrate the process, and build one another up.
End of rant.
* I had to look up 'clapper.' Now my Google history shows "what is the name of the donging bit in a bell?" I wonder what the aliens would think about us if they read our Google histories.
