You have to get to a point where you have NO FEAR when creating your art. You can never stray too far away from your center. Your voice is important. If a rapper bite rhymes it may sound hot, but it ain't you – it ain't authentic. As a visual artist you have to spend countless hours developing your voice – YES you can have influences. We are all influenced by someone….. And sure that influence may show up in your work … but at some point people want to see who You ARE – they want to see what YOU are adding to the culture. That’s where the fear comes in.
People spend hours absorbing films and music. Their hands are always scrolling or texting on their phone. They drown themselves in trivial time gaps. They are afraid of the silence. More specifically, they are afraid of spending quiet time with themselves. Why have we gotten to the point where we are afraid of our own thoughts? Afraid to get to know our true selves? That fear is multiplied when it comes time to show our true selves to others. MC Breed eloquently put it, “ain’t no future in yo frontin” ….. So if we are constantly trying to be something that we are not to please other people, just image what artist go through. They create work to first and foremost please others before they even think about what pleases themselves.
STOP BEING AFRAID!!!!! Find out who you are as an artist. Embrace it. After you embrace it, enhance it. Develop what you love and want to say – form it in a way that it can be served to the public. Will it please everyone? Probably not …… but that’s not the most important thing at the moment. The biggest obstacle is overcoming the FEAR that is holding you back from creating EXACTLY what is in your mind. Who cares how it is initially received. Let them catch up.
When I was knee deep in the film game, I got so many letters that said “no”, the word had lost its edge to me. NO don’t mean a thing to me anymore. I can hear the word NO 1000 times. No sweat off my back …. Because I know there is a YES around the corner. The same equates to art. Somewhere, somebody is gonna dig what you are doing. There is an audience for everything. FEAR NOT ….. just create.
