As an artist, we want to please people. We want to make people happy. We want people to enjoy our art. To be encouraged by it. To recognize it as a source of their own strength. Admit it! You want your art to be useful. And knowing that can actually be a productive thing.
We eagerly await approval when showing others a sample of our work. It’s ok to admit. It’s even good to be excited about one’s work. But being faithful to one’s work does not mean certain people will like it. But the good news here: your creation will find its own people.
Your creative “products,” in essence, have their own life. Yes, they represent you and your overall quality, but have their own reality as well. Like words spoken or written, they go out. And once out, do something in the universe. In the hearts of those who hear them.
Words, like your work, can find a way into open hearts. This is what makes life beautiful. We offer our sacrifices of love to the world, not knowing what will become of them. We entrust them to God to find their way into fertile soil beds, to deposit secret messages from the deep.
And it works. Life finds a way. But not at first. Not in the ways we thought it would. We assume we know our audience. We assume we know who will like our music. Our art. Our works. We assume we know what sort of people will be attracted to and inspired by our message.
We don’t.
In reality that is above our pay grade. We can not determine our listeners, or watchers, or even patrons. We can guess. In some cases we have to. Now of course there is a science of and technology to do these predictions today. There is a whole field dedicated to this very thing.
But something feels lost in the process. Somewhere out there in all those zeroes and ones are people. Human beings. Responsive. Alive. Surprising. Listening. Looking. We will not always know them. We will not know their interactions with our work. But they are there.
While the internet may feel like an amorphous blob of over-connections, lost connection, and misconnection, there are still real people out there. People searching for real things. People wanting real help. People needing real inspiration. Are you willing to go out and find them?
That’s the beauty of the hustle. Of trying. Attempting to connect people. Ideas. Places. To let our creations be part of all the intersections that are part of that human web. It’s incredible really. The miracles it takes to line those things up are nothing short of a miracle.
And we get to be part of it.
As we continue to lay things out, eventually something hits. Something breaks through. A sprout makes it out. And we get to see a victory. We get to experience our thing, making it from our head and heart into the head and heart of another. A beautiful, genuine transfer is made.
That transfer process of one life to another is why we are here. There is nothing as beautiful. Nothing is more real. Nothing is more rewarding. That intersection of life finding life is what we create for. It is our purpose.
Don’t lose site of the people on the other side of those wires. They are real. And don’t get tangled up in the web in which you find them. Our job is not to fix the system. We just have to use it. Share your work! Let it do its work. It will!
