posted by ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
laramie at 02:53pm on 09/01/2019
laramie at 02:53pm on 09/01/2019In answer to someone telling me "Creative works do not exist unless they are experienced by someone other than the artist."
Of course connecting with others is part of the artistic impulse. Some arts are much more immediate than others. Music or drama can offer a direct connection with an audience who are present to applaud and laugh and cry in all the right places.
A musician playing alone in the hills is still doing something creative.
By necessity, an artist is hir own first audience. Hir eyes see and approve the drawing or the canvas or bead work before deeming it worthy to share. Hir ears hear the hours of practice, hir inner reader has been immersed in hir stories and has tweaked and shaped and worked them to the point of approval before taking any steps to bring them to others. And no one pleases everyone.
How many great writers would the world have lost if they'd taken their initial rejections to heart? Would Lin Manuel be less creative if set before an audience who hated rap? Would Nora Roberts be less creative if exposed to the opinions of people who hate Romance? Finding one's audience is a whole different skill than the creative work itself.
I get furious with myself for discounting my work when I fail to connect with an audience that will appreciate it. If it is work that I approved of, there will be other people in the world who appreciate it as well. Maybe that will be a very small audience, but if I tell the truth of my soul through my work, that small audience who appreciates that truth is the one with whom I need to connect and I do myself and them a disservice by discounting the value of that connection.