A TEDIOUS MYTH RE. CREATIVITY

“If you were truly fulfilled, you wouldn’t need affirmation”

This myth deserves to be properly dismantled.

Before I get into this, I’m not talking about exercises, warm-ups, or pieces done for pure inspiration or fun - art made for practice, self-growth, or relaxation (and also, yes, for affirmation) which is all well and good, and something I would absolutely encourage! But it is not the same as work done by professionals as their full-time career, because for them there is more at stake.

When a professional creator talks about needing an audience it does not invalidate their love for the work. Humans, as a species, are social meaning-makers. And art is all about communication. It is not some kind of sealed-up, interior ritual performed purely for the self. Wanting the signal to be received doesn’t lessen our work, or diminish its value. On the contrary! That’s what it is for, at its heart. It is, in itself, a form of language.

And the problem isn’t that we ‘just want perpetual affirmation’. It’s that affirmation arrives asymmetrically and unpredictably, so our nervous systems are forever checking the door. We’re trying to measure intrinsic value using extrinsic instruments. Pretty much every creator I know does this to a greater or lesser extent - some neurotically, some with curiosity - because the thing being judged is inseparable from ourselves. It’s the sum of much of a lifetime of doing this, and everything we know, love and are bleeds out and into it, whether we want it to or not. It will always say something about us.

And what people see there, when it connects with them, is something like a mirror. We find kinship - core aspects that define ourselves, as much as they do any given creator. It’s all about that connection. And it can make you think, cry, reassess, feel inspired, laugh or get angry. All human feeling can be captured in the arts. That’s what transmitting ideas does. And sure, it can also be pure entertainment - in which you can choose to see nothing, or find allegory, satire, or dismiss as vacuous fluff - but it is still communication.

And when we talk about the issues of maintaining an audience, or growing one - because all audiences will wither over time if they are not entertained or encouraged - it is not just because of an egotistical need for endless affirmation, it is because such validation is, as mentioned, part of any communication process, and that’s absolutely OK. But more than that - this is our job. It’s our livelihood.

So when people say “If you were truly fulfilled, you wouldn’t need affirmation” or “If you really loved drawing/writing you would do it for nothing”, they are really missing several points, not just one -

We do it for practical, survival reasons - to keep the roof over our heads, the lights on, and to feed and clothe ourselves and our families.

And we do it as an act of communication. Not as perpetually spiraling inward-looking self-fulfillment exercises, with no other function but to pleasure ourselves.

Warped self-portrait 2008