What Every Artist Needs

from The Icarus Deception by Seth Godin

If you're related to or married to or work for or have an artist work for you (or if you're an artist and want to share this with your team), here are a few tactical thoughts on happiness and productivity.

Don't question the commitment to the mission. It's not helpful to kindly suggest that the artist might want to think about taking a day job to tide things over or giving up or settling down or lowering the bar. The artisit thinks about these things every single day, and she doesn't need you to remind her that it's possible to trade in her life and her dram for a better job so that she can buy more industrialized luxuries and trinkets.

After the work is done, don't question the tactics, especially if you haven't bee asked. The time to brainstorm about the very best way to interact with the market is while the art is being created, not after it has failed.

On the other hand it's totally appropriate to ask your artist if she wants to discuss how to improve the chances that her audience will understand her art better.

Reassurance is futile. You will never be able to contribute enough reassurance to bridge the artist over the ongoing chasm that every decision and every project and every tactic brings with it. Artists need significant reassurance that they have chosen a worthy path and that you have their back. But reassurance about the work itself must come from within.

The best question you can ask an artist is "How is this going to work?"

Try to differentiate between the critical input of what on person (you) thinks about the art and the difficult empathetic understanding of what someone who isn't you thought about the art. You might not like it, but it's not fair to universalize and say that no one is going to like it. If you're not able to understand the work from the audience's point of view, probably better to say nothing.

The artist needs your unwavering commitment to her mission. This is the largest price you pay for being with and supporting an artist, and yes, you can can probably invest even more time, passion, and money into doing this than you already do.

Part of supporting the mission is pushing the artist to be more committed, not less, pushing for more focus and edge and weirdness, not less. Eddie Murphy doesn't need people telling him to make yet another dumb movie for a lot of money - he need support so he'll get back on track and make a great movie, for free if he has to.

The artist doesn't need to be given an out to avoid making art.The artist doesn't need reminders about reality or lawyers or regulations or even the rules of physics. The artist merely needs to be encouraged and cajoled and supported to make better art.

I've got a rock and roll heart

It's 10 o'clock on the day after the fall time change, which means to my body, it should be an hour later, well past my normal sleeping time ... And what am I doing? Laying in bed with Eric Clapton's Rock & Roll Heart stuck in my head, "I get off on 57 Chevy's, I get off on screaming guitars ..."

So what do I get off on? Hmmmm, right now the list includes ...

Living in the moment, totally sucked into, absorbing each moment. It's so amazing when I see it, feel it happening and it happens more than it used to, still less then it should ... But I'm counting that this change as a positive!

Food, not crappy, chemical mass produced food ... amazing fresh foods, hand crafted, full of flavors ... for instance, I'm trying a new recipe out on my co-workers tomorrow ... a chicken curry soup ... if it's amazing, I'll share the link to the recipe, if it's not ... well I'll share that too.

Music - man oh man, have I been loving me some new music these days ... Oliver Mtukudzi, Ray LaMontange, Brave, sung by Sara Bareilles ... just to name a few.

Friends ... this year has been filled with up and downs for me. I am so grateful for my good core friends (and family members) that have stood by me and loved me. I'm also so thrilled to have gotten to know a group of new amazing people this summer. Life is so good, so amazing (oh yeah, that goes back to the first item on this list!)

Meditation & spirituality - this topic is way to huge for one single post but rest assured that I'll visit it later.

Adventure - I'm litterally buzzing with the sense that something HUGE is about to happen and all kinds of amazing travel, fun and adventure is just around the corner - I'm not practicing living in the moment at all, when I shout to the heavens "come on already! I'm tired of waiting, bring on the fun, games & adventure!"

My purpose

My purpose in life is ...

I need to create; 

to make the world a more beautiful place

to connect with others

to help them see how good life is.