John Lacey » Success

Good Taste And The Gap

John Lacey — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 01:33:23 +0000

Cynthia Harrison wonders if she isn’t a bit ‘mental’. She writes:

I’ve always wondered if writing is a sign of a mental problem–for me specifically, not for other writers. I mean, really, why would I want to do something for which I am routinely rejected? And for so long? I’ve been writing for 40 years. Trying to publish a novel for 30 years. Well, off and on, between kids and marriages and degrees and teaching jobs, but still. Why haven’t I given up?

Well lots of people do quit. Does that make them sane?

Ira Glass, host of This American Life, talks in terms of good taste – that passion and understanding you have of your artform – and the gap between that good taste, that thing that you aspire to, and your current abilities.

Ira Glass:

And you get into this thing that I don’t even know how to describe but it’s like there’s a gap, that for the first couple of years that you’re making stuff what you’re making isn’t so good. It’s not that great, it’s really not that great. It’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it’s not quite that good. But your taste – the thing that got you into the game – your taste is still killer. And your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you’re making is kind of a disappointment to you, you know what I mean? Like you can tell that it’s still sort of crappy.

A lot of people never get past that phase, a lot of people at that point they quit. And the thing I would just like say to you with all my heart is that most everybody I know who does interesting creative work they went through a phase of years where they had really good taste, they could tell what they were making wasn’t as good as they wanted it to be, they knew that it fell short. [...] But we knew like it didn’t have the special ‘thing’ that we wanted it to have. And the thing I would say to you is that everyone goes through that.

So I guess there are two ways of ‘dealing’ with the gap. Either you decide it’s too large – or too unimportant – and quit, or you keep working to overcome it. You overcome it by creating that great body of work Ira speaks about, by continuing to show up to the page or canvas [or whatever your medium is].

Thanks to Joshua Withers for bringing this video to my attention.

Gever Tulley: Sweet Success Or Gleeful Calamity

John Lacey — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 01:05:33 +0000

Gever Tulley, creator of The Tinkering School, speaking at TED:

Nothing ever turns out as planned … ever. (Laughter) And the kids soon learn that all projects go awry — (Laughter) and become at ease with the idea that every step in a project is a step closer to sweet success, or gleeful calamity. We start from doodles and sketches. And sometimes we make real plans. And sometimes we just start building. Building is at the heart of the experience. Hands on, deeply immersed and fully committed to the problem at hand. Robin and I, acting as collaborators, keep the landscape of the projects tilted towards completion. Success is in the doing. And failures are celebrated and analyzed. Problems become puzzles and obstacles disappear.

Can you imagine how different your life might be if you started celebrating your failures?

The mind boggles… and that’s kind of the point.

Adam Savage: Failure Is The Car You’re Driving

John Lacey — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 12:59:28 +0000

Mythbuster Adam Savage on success and failure:

Well so if failure gives you this kind of shape to your intuition, what does success give you? Well what is success? Success is moving forward. Success is being able to build on what you’ve done and continue to do it and move forward. So if I think of success as the road, I think of failure as the car you’re driving – it’s the car that I’m driving, at least. It’s the vehicle by which I move forward. Its those incremental steps. Because [...] you never go in just one direction, you’re always getting knocked back, you’re always getting batted off to the side, you’re always trying to refind your bearings. And that’s super super important, super vital and I hope I’ve properly communicated it.

The whole Fora TV talk goes for about an hour but if you have the time it is worth watching.

Thanks to SleepyDumpling for the hat tip.

Tori Amos: Most People Don’t Show Up For Essence

John Lacey — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 02:08:25 +0000

Sometimes creativity can be a lonely business. You hide away in a lonely room working on your novel or writing that song or doing whatever it is you do, and eventually you release it to the world and hope it reaches an audience. It is easy to become discouraged if things don’t work out the way you had hoped they would.

Tori Amos:

Finding your voice is the most important thing you can do. Its different for each of us in this room. But you have to recognize when you’ve found yours or when you really haven’t and you’re just agreeing with everybody because it makes pops happy or it makes the girlfriend happy or it gets people off your back at work. You have to know, hang on a minute, what path am I following? And sometimes that’s a lonely walk. Sometimes everybody leaves you. Trust me, when the champagne is flowing, there’s a line out the door. Everybody’s there. But when it’s not – very few people are there. Because most people don’t show up for essence. They don’t show up for the art, for the work. They show up for the success. And once you begin to understand that then you really know what people are made of.

This interview is from Channel V’s Box Set series. I had hoped to link you directly to the relevant section of the interview from the site’s official content, however after watching an ad for some skin product I was informed that The Selected Video Is No Longer Available.

John Lacey » Success

Good Taste And The Gap

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