It’s the Indifference that Will Get You
It’s the Indifference that Will Get You
February 22, 2024, 11:46 pm
Filed under: art, Creative Process, theatre | Tags: art, criticism, dead frog in the road, Edinburgh, indifference, live, performing arts, podcast, theatre
There’s not nearly as much criticism as I expected in this artist’s life. When I got started, I really thought people would be lining up to tell me what was wrong with my work all the time. I think it’s what a lot of people are afraid of when it comes to sharing their creations. What are people going to say? I know now that the thing people are most likely going to say is nothing.
I want to be clear that I’m not asking for criticism. Sometimes nothing is better than whatever catty thing someone wants to tell you. I’m not complaining about not receiving insults to my work. But what I was NOT prepared for and continue to be floored by is the extraordinary indifference to it.
It feels like — I come out on stage in my elaborate costume that I spent weeks making out of found objects and I expect some applause. I’ve just made a grand entrance! But — not only do I not get applause, or boos, — the crowd doesn’t even stop talking. So I stand there awkwardly in my egg carton gown trying to work out what I should do. No one is particularly interested in me or this costume or the incredible character development I did for this moment. I try a little dance. I sing a little song. I try everything I can think of. And maybe one person in the back starts to get it, which is great, but then the hour we paid for in this theatre is up and I’ve got to get off the stage.
Most of my creative life feels like this these days. And partly that’s because I’m mostly in on-line spaces where the rewards are slow and fewer. But even when I do stuff live and in person, it is very challenging to get an audience in, and there is no indifference quite like the indifference of a bunch of empty seats.
No one ever tells me they think my work is shit. I haven’t had a bad review since the Scotsman tore my clown show to pieces at the Edinburgh Fringe. I believe the reviewer called me (or the show) “a dead frog on the road” or maybe “dead toad on the road” — if they were going for a rhyme. But at least that reviewer from The Scotsman showed up. She was literally the only one at that show. Our team ran around the building begging anyone they could find to come in and watch it with the reviewer. I think they found one additional audience member for that show?
Anyway — I’d almost prefer having a house full of clones of that mean lady from The Scotsman than the indifference I run up against almost every time I do something. At least the dead frog lady sat there and endured me, even if she hated it. It’s like — criticism looms large. Of course I still remember being called a dead frog (or a toad?) even though it was over fifteen years ago. But while it hurt, that dead frog business did fire me up. I became very determined to show her she was wrong. There’s something to push against with criticism. Indifference gives you absolutely nothing. It hurts, too. But in a deflating way. It’s not sharp. It just makes you want to lie down in the road like a frog and never make anything again.
In a digital space, it’s just a moment to be endured. When I launched the second season of The Dragoning a couple of years ago — after building up the release for weeks — it had zero listens for over a day and a half. It felt like finally birthing a baby after nine months of growing it and discovering it was just a handful of lint. All that pushing for a handful of lint? It was very disappointing. But a year later, we’d gone to 21 in the charts in Russia, 27 in Sweden and 85 here in the US and also, New Zealand. So the initial indifference starts to fade if you have something that continues to grow. But not everything does, particularly not the live performing arts, and it doesn’t necessarily help the next time you present your new work to the world and find that there is no response.
The effect is worse when the project is big and you put in a lot of time and effort. At this point, almost everyone knows what it’s like to put up a pithy little post on social media and have it go nowhere. OR to have it blow up! It’s just a little thought you had and you put it up and depending on which way the algorithm is blowing, you will get a response or not. Your little remark can live or die based on who the algorithm shows it to and when.
The thing is — things like an audio drama that take months of work and over a dozen people to come to fruition, show up on that same landscape. The way the internet flattens everything, a tweet is equivalent to a whole show. And tweets often do better than whole shows. If we were doing things for rewards, it makes no sense to create anything that takes any serious labor. It is easier to tweet than to write and record a song and a lot more people will read your tweet than listen to your song (or your podcast or watch your movie or come to your play or dance or any of it). People are not only more likely to read your tweet than engage with your art, they would generally rather “like” your tweet than engage with your art. Sometimes I can feel people praying I will not compel them to deal with my art. There’s an undercurrent of “Please don’t make me read your blog, or listen to your music, or listen to your podcast, or watch your video” or whatever it is. And those of us who are stubborn just go on and make things anyway, hoping to contribute something to the world, to express something we feel is important or just continue to make art. Even though no one is asking for it and some are actively hoping we won’t make them look at it, we make it anyway. And then, inevitably, that art is met with indifference. No one calls us dead frogs in the road but still — we feel like a dead frog in the road because no one even came out to look at us.
In my experience, most people express a gladness that I continue to create — but (with some very notable exceptions, thank you!) just aren’t that interested in the creations. I have people I feel this way about, too, so I understand it. It just feels lousy. It makes it hard to motivate making anything more complex than a tweet. And the thing of it is, I think we REALLY NEED ART that is MORE COMPLEX than a TWEET! I think this is really damn important. It doesn’t have to be my work that you engage with — but please engage with someone’s art, especially the indie ones who are getting so little positive feedback. Go see someone’s something. Find something nice to say about it even if you hate it. Or don’t. And just go.
I had a friend come see a show recently and they said, “It was so….” And then just trailed off. That was all. I know they did not like it. That’s okay. They came. They weren’t indifferent to me or my work. They didn’t call me a dead frog in the road. I actually call that a win.
This post was brought to you by my patrons on Patreon.
They also bring you the podcast version of the blog.
It’s also called Songs for the Struggling Artist
You can find the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
Every podcast features a song at the end. Some of those songs are on Spotify, Apple Music, my website, ReverbNation, Deezer, Bandcamp and Amazon Music.
*
Want to help fight the storms of indifference?
Become my patron on Patreon.
Click HERE to Check out my Patreon Page
Or you can subscribe to my Substack
*
If you liked the blog and would like to give a dollar (or more!) put it in the PayPal digital hat. https://www.paypal.me/strugglingartist
Or you could throw your dollars in the digital Ko-Fi Hat! — ko-fi.com/emilyrainbowdavis
Leave a Comment so far
Leave a comment
Originally published at http://artiststruggle.wordpress.com on February 23, 2024.
