I too, like many of you reading this newsletter, am a musician/music producer. I have been making music for years now, after completing a BA degree in Creative Musicianship. My focus is always been towards creating new sounds, new compositions, and in general towards pursuing music as a form of art, rather than a simple exercise in entertainment.
All looks good right? Well, yes, except that in many occasions I have found myself listening back to my work, thinking ‘This is not good enough’, or ‘ This doesn’t sound special enough, I should be able to do more’. It’s only by listening back a few months later, that I realize I had a pretty good piece in my hand. I just wasn’t able to recognize it at the time.
We must realize that there is no such thing as failure; everything has its meaning, and it is part of the process. The transcript below is a pretty inspirational quote by Will Gomperz, author of the book ‘Think Like An Artist’ - hope it will help consolidate your creative drive in the pursuit of art!
Artists Don’t Fail
“When it comes to creativity, failure is as inevitable as it is unavoidable. It is part of the very fabric of making. All artists, regardless of their discipline, aim for perfection - why wouldn't they? But they know perfection is unobtainable. And therefore they have to accept that everything they produce is doomed to be a failure to some degree. As Plateau argued, the game is rigged. Which, if you think about it, makes the concept of failure close to meaningless.
The logical conclusion must be that there is no such thing as failure. But there is such a thing as the feeling of failure, which is an inescapable part of any creative process. And it's not nice. But unfortunately, it is an essential component. Which is where many of us come unstuck. We don't always appreciate that when we experience a major creative disappointment it is both normal and requisite, and certainly not a sign that we should give up. There is a temptation to believe this is the moment when we have failed as opposed to simply being one of the less pleasant parts of the creative process. Artists don't tend to think that way.
Yes, artists fail. We all do. But only in the most perfunctory sense, in so much as not everything we attempt works out as we had hoped. But such instances are never really failures, because through persistence and application we will reach a point of clarity which is only accessible because of those so-called failures. There we will find our voice, our Plan B, our Big Idea.
A far more important lesson to learn from artists is not that they fail, but that they prevail. Artist Make. Artist Do.” - Will Gomperz
