If, as a child and later on as well, you often felt you weren't heard, a plaintive desire to be heard persists. But you learn how to be quietly modest (or comically boastful) about your achievements.
Time to beat the drum?
Monday, January 07, 2019
TO BLOW OR NOT TO BLOW?
When is the right time to blow one's own trumpet, loud enough to reach
the ears one would like to reach? You know what I mean.
If, as a child and later on as well, you often felt you weren't heard, a plaintive desire to be heard persists. But you learn how to be quietly modest (or comically boastful) about your achievements.
Time to beat the drum?
If, as a child and later on as well, you often felt you weren't heard, a plaintive desire to be heard persists. But you learn how to be quietly modest (or comically boastful) about your achievements.
Time to beat the drum?
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2 comments:
A most interesting question. Trouble is, there's such a cacophony of trumpets and drums, each rehearsing within earshot of one another, that individual blowers and beaters tend to get lost in the general pandemonium.
More interesting still, I suggest, are similar questions beginning with "why?" and touching on the quest for meaning in one's life.
Where is that meaning to be found? Suppose one finds that meaning, as revealed in successive moments of the day, that one finds no time to bother about reaching someone else's ear? Especially if one has already caught the abiding attention of at least one other person?
Then one can be certain that the flame has not gone out. Like the symbolic Olympian torch, it will stay lit by a relay of others.
We are creators, we can work to our own satisfaction, & leave marketing to others.
I think of my namesake, who just went on painting, almost to the last day, sent his stuff to brother Theo who looked after all the marketing from his gallery.
Vincent, indeed it's a complex subject. But my question was not about marketing. The work that I do and that I've been deeply engaged with all my artist-life, is who I am. I already have meaning in my life and no doubts at all about meaning in a broader philosophical sense. You bring up Van Gogh: but Vincent was desperate for recognition (read his letters to Theo) and Theo did his best but the art world at that time wasn't attuned to Vincent's way of seeing. Vincent knew that his work, vision, was something unique. This wasn't boastful vanity. He knew it, it was in his bones, and he was right. Eventually it was recognised. He wanted to share his vision with with everyone. That's what recognition meant for him. I was not saying that one stops creating if here's no recognition. Artists (or anyone else) who depend on approval in order to create are not real artists and have nothing to offer.
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