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.
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