Writing With Silvia Hartmann
Writing - You Need Courage, Not Talent!
>>> Thank you dear one. I love art, and
it is a blessing to be so talented as to publish your work. I will check it out.
Blessings and thank you for sharing and allowing us to see your work<<<
Well, this was a very nice and warming sentiment that flowed quite sweetly
through me but in truth, and this is an absolute truth about the universe,
"talent" has nothing to do with it.
Really.
It is a question not of talent but of courage. Now, we could call "courage" a
talent but I don't really think so; and here is my reasoning.
In order for me to have received the above message (and other comments on those
pieces of work) I had to publish my work FIRST.
In those days, that was not an easy thing for I am and was overly sensitive to
the shortcomings of my own work, as is everyone else.
Now, MOST people then do one of the following. They will either:
A) hide their work in a closet; the reasoning being that it's "only for
practice" or "I'll wait until I get better at it and the major flaws are
overcome before I publish it."
Or
B) hide their work in a closet and wait for an unknown force to come knocking on
the door and demand to see the wonders hidden in the closet and this way, "they
will be discovered". Magically.
There are SOME people who do something else.
They take their "attempts" out of the closet and brazenly, bravely, sometimes
stupidly put them out there. I am one of those people.
The result of this is that THEIR paintings, songs, books, whatever then ARE OUT
THERE and in being there, they BECOME THAT WHICH IS PUBLISHED AND THEREBY
PUBLIC.
This is completely regardless and irrespective of whether there is ANY MERIT,
ANY TALENT or even ANY CONTRIBUTION beyond that courageous act of "public
performance" AT ALL.
Next, we have the responses of the audience and the critics to this public
performance.
This is also completely immaterial.
High praise and high criticism alike causes attention and controversy, which
gets even MORE people to be interested and more people to see and interact with
the performance.
If the artist simply doesn't stop, they WILL eventually get all the things that
artists want, from acclaim, to a fan club, to high prices for their performances
- and all of that is TOTALLY REGARDLESS of any inherent merit whatsoever.
It all rests of the courage of the performer or artist to put themselves out
there and weather the storms of response. That is the ONLY SINGLE FACTOR which
defines the difference between a successful artist, and a closet artist, not
talent, not merit, not luck.
Now that courage arises interestingly not so much from a belief in the MERIT of
the art, but simply from the fact that the artist CAN'T STOP DOING IT even if
they wanted to.
This is what makes them go back for more and do it AGAIN, even after all the
reviews were abysmal, or there were no reviews at all and everyone ignored them
completely.
The act of doing the performance is something that can't be stopped by FEEDBACK,
and that is the defining skill and talent of any artist or anyone who seeks
public acceptance and acclaim as artists do, no matter what their field of
endeavour might be, and no matter what level they are defining "public
acceptance" at.
Now if we pull that right back upon its most basic components, then what we have
is the INVINCIBILITY of something that comes from within the artist and compels
them to do what it is they are doing. Because it comes from within, it can't be
destroyed or even tampered with from without, and you could say that the various
hurdles of public acceptability are nothing more than a device to filter the
wheat from the chaff, i.e. that only those who simply cannot stop will succeed
in the end and come through, BECOME THE NEW STANDARD eventually and the
acclaimed artists of the day.
Talent, craft or skill is NOT what makes the artist in the end.
It is their own truth and their own internal processes, their drive to DO what
it is they are doing.
If this is strong enough, they simply will continue to sing right up to the
scaffold, preach right up to the guillotine, and draw their images on street
corners with their canvass being the asphalt when it comes to it.
An interesting observation, to be sure.
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