8.09.2007
On Self-doubt
I'm not even sure how to approach this one. I'm even too doubtful of my own ability to be articulate enough to create a blog post. I'm not sure that this is a universal question or if it's simply THE thing that I grapple with personally. I am currently in a real rut. A real slump. A real experience of crippling self doubt. We're in this profession that relies on the public eye-- on some sense of approval for the risks that we take-- and I have no idea how to reconcile my own sense of artistic growth and risk-taking with prominent public failures. It makes me want to eat cake. Grow fat and move to Nebraska where I might just be a big fish in a little pond. Quit theatre altogether and become a masseuse. How do I continue to put my ideas out there (and really, to produce my own work and invite people to it) if I am constantly thinking "I don't think I'm good enough" or "gosh, the theatre doesn't think I'm good enough" or "jeez, there's no way I stack up compared to the other work that's out there. I bet the WORLD doesn't think I'm good enough"? Richard Foreman once said to me that he makes theatre for three people. Literally. And he knows who those three people are. Everyone else can go hang. I'm not sure I have that chutzpah. Or if I even like his work. But his words resonate. There's something to be said for knowing who to listen to-- whose opinion counts for you, personally. It's that need for approval, in a global sense-- a need for "Fellow" or "Award-winning" or somesuch after my name that's kicking my butt right now. In a business that (rightly so) relies on audiences approving of the work in a way that means they'll purchase a ticket for it, how do we, the artists, measure success? And what is artistic growth anyway? Is it just another phrase for pretentious? What does risk mean in our business?
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2 comments:
My dear Quincy,
Perhaps the struggle to overcome that self-doubt is what seperates artists from the rest of the world.
Did you know that the term avant-garde is a military term? Generally, it means a small troop of highly skilled soldiers, exploring the terrain ahead of a large advancing army and plotting a course for the army to follow. They are the line BEFORE the front line, trekking into the unknown (often enemy territory).
I bring up this militaristic image to help you think for a moment about what we're trying to do in this business, every day.
There is no path. Each one of us walks our own path. We all have to be inventing our route every day (and that's exhausting). We are all out in unknown territory, trying to chart our course but not knowing where we are and where our current position lies in relation to where we ultimately want to go.
There is an enemy, and mostly the enemy is apathy and complacency not only in the community at large but within the theatrical community. There seems to be a system but no one tells you what it is. Each of us is without a compass and in the middle of a wilderness.
Yikes. It's ok to be scared.
Here is the most important thing to remember when you're trying to survive as one of the soldiers of the avant-garde:
There is, in the words of my (second) favorite president: "THERE IS NOTHING TO FEAR BUT FEAR ITSELF."
Failure is better than the choice not to try. And every failure is accompanied with the gift of a lesson if you're open to learning.
And one more thing: rabble-rousers don't need pedigrees - or qualifiers. Remember that.
Love and kisses,
Tommy J
And here's what the REAL TJ had to say:
I have sometimes asked myself whether my country is the better for my having lived at all? I do not know that it is. I have been the instrument of doing the following things; but they would have been done by others; some of them, perhaps, a little better.
Thomas Jefferson, 1800
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