A few words...

[s00j]

...about bad reviews and how to process them, specifically geared towards other creative people, whether we’ve met or not.
Most of you reading this are no doubt pretty good at dealing with dorks by now. :-)

Take it or leave it: this is advice I’m trying to give to/accept myself right now, first and foremost

Comments

[deborah_c]

Thank you; this is something I often need to be reminded of, and with which I'm (consciously) struggling right now. Just at this moment, it's in a work context -- and, actually, good engineering counts as an art form too -- an annual review that says "almost everything that you did was far beyond expectations even for someone quite senior, and that makes you, erm, average". Guess which bit I'm focussing on?

I'm quite proud of what I achieved musically last year -- I played two major concertos, one of them one of the hardest in the repertoire, and the other at a few hours notice -- but my brain is gradually filing that under "doesn't everyone do that?". I think the problem is that we're often our own harshest critics...

Anyway, yes, onwards. Even if "the next big thing" is a GoH slot where I still don't entirely know what the concom was smokingthinking :-)

[s00j]

You are so right. We are all absolutely our own worst critic, and thank goodness, because the bitch who lives inside my head is WAY nastier than anyone on the outside could *ever* be. I'd just as soon she stay in there... :)

[inaurolillium]

Yes. This

[s00j]

<3 you are more of an artist than so many reviewers would ever realize.

[inaurolillium]

<3

[technoshaman]

I'll second that... you had serious presentation to match your preparation... and *class*, too. I remember vividly the first thing you did after announcing the Kitchen was closing was to post the key lime pie recipe. (And it damn well makes up like you intended it, too, I tried it within a week... :D ) I hope the good karma you earned from that has come home in spades.

[hypnagogie]

Here's what helps me in those situations (relating to art and relating to interpersonal stuff in general). I had a professor once, who responded to me saying that I wanted everyone to like me like this: "If everyone likes you, you don't exist."

She said that people have different tastes, and so, if you exist strongly as what you are, some will like you and some will not. If they all do, that means you're changing yourself to fit each individual taste. You're pandering. It's if everyone likes you that you should worry that you're no longer making art.

[s00j]

:D thank you. Very, very well said.

[juglore]

I don't think I've ever gotten past a bad review. I used to play the harp. I got a bad review one night. I haven't touched it since. Stupid to do it that way. But I can't stop.

I used to juggle. I was starting to get some paying gigs. A friend hired me as a dancing bear. She didn't care how well I juggled. She wanted to point to the miracle of this handicapped guy juggling. That was the end of the juggling.

[s00j]

I'm so sorry. :( Wish I had something to say more useful than that but after reading your second paragraph there, I'm...wow. People really don't think.

[billroper]

Gretchen is fond of the statement, "Just because something is not to your taste, it doesn't mean that it's bad." Different people like different things and that's not just ok, it's goodI have been mixing albums long enough that I can get (I hope) objectively critical about a particular mix. (The pithy Gretchen has threatened to have put on her tombstone, "I would have mixed it differently." :) ) Other people will have a different opinion

[s00j]

Thank you so much, Bill. :) Yeah, they would have mixed it differently, for sure. But it's mine, my own, my precious.

I can't turn the engineer-brain off anymore. It's gotten so I listen to a lot less music while driving these days, because my brain wants to multitask. :)

[inaurolillium]

Steven Brust has a good bit on this in The Sun, the Moon, and the Stars (which is sort of his meditation on art and the creative process wrapped up the the paralleled stories of a Hungarian folktale and the story of a studio full of young artists trying to put together a show), which is what I always think of when the topic comes up. But yeah, "I like it" and "It is good" are orthogonal concepts.

Hence the popularity of, say, Ed Wood movies, or the way nobody liked van Gogh when he was alive.