Wednesday 12th July, 2023
*My head is absolutely pounding this week… the potency of my thoughts may fluctuate.*
It happened when you weren’t looking…
I’ve become a little jaded I think… trading in creative enthusiasm for experience & a false sense of predictability. It happens to us all at some point I guess, & it’s a nefarious place to be. When you’re caught in a sense of jade, being enthusiastic seems naive, or just straight up misguided. Through jaded eyes the world conflates pessimism & realism, it sees the bias & unfairness in the functions of the systems you’ve to contend with. Thoughts crop up around ‘the point’ of trying to make art, & how we should just spend all our time networking instead of making anything good, or we could opt to continue doing neither (most people who complain about needing to network, don’t seem to make much of impact anyways)
What I’m driving at here, is that it all kind of crept up on me. With each little rejection, you manage yourself, your expectations, & you start to view the world through these rejections. Eventually you look back on a younger self, who had all of this creative energy & passion. The person who woke up at 8am & began emailing people furiously for opportunities before jumping on the piano at 10am after everyone had woken up… (too specific?) I think that it creeps up on us all actually, & a lot of us don’t notice it. Makes me wonder…
Is there an up side to being jaded?
In a way, it protects us from getting our hopes up, in a world where our hopes are constantly tackled & challenged. Setting your expectations low is a recipe for ‘not being sad’. (I wouldn’t exactly say that low expectations help you be content of happy) Being jaded can make you seem cool & aloof. When you don’t put your earnest heart into the world, it can seem like you’re above it all & people do seem drawn to the jaded folk. Being jaded might also make you more tactical in your approach, paying attention to the ‘less fun’ sides of the industry & helping you treat the job as ‘a job’.
But this is all I can really think of right now… from where I’m at, just becoming aware of my jaded sensibilities. It seems like more of a negative than a positive… at least for an artist anyways. The jaded are less likely to believe, less likely to lean into failure, less likely to apply, or try at all. Being an artist, you need to believe in what you feel & what you like… what you hear in your heart. To bring something original into the world you need to be the strongest voice in any room you’re ever in. You need to trust in yourself to the point of delusion. & you need to detach yourself from failure… it WILL happen, but that won’t stop your success. Failure & success are not mutually exclusive concepts… they are relative. Your success now might seem a total failure in hindsight, & visa versa.
I gotta cut this short cause my head is caving in… but I’ll leave you with this:
In the light, jade shines beautifully.
N
