i walked in backstage to see a fellow performer sewing up the back of the show directors costume.
Her pants had ripped right down the center of the ass. This was after not being able to find her glove and realizing she brought the wrong spat.
i could tell the whole thing shook her. Her energy was everything but focused on what she was about to do – perform.
She turned to me in the mirror and asked if it was all noticeable.
No. But it doesn’t matter. If they’re paying that much attention to all that (drawing an invisible line from her costume to her shoes) then you’re not doing your job.
You’re right.
We left it at that. She took the stage and slayed!
When i start to worry about all the small details that are wrong or not to my liking, i remind myself if that’s what my audience is focusing on – a missing stone here, the wrong color spat, that hair that’s just a tad bit out of place – then i, as a performer, am not doing my job properly.
My job is to entertain to you. To whisk you away into the fantastical world of whatever mood, feeling, or theatrical vibe i’m creating. My job is to create an experience powerful enough to make you forget about the details – not focus on them.
The same is true for all creatives. If your audience is paying that much attention to all the details that you feel crappy about, then you’re not doing your job – as a performer, writer, business owner, actor, etc. – to pull them into your art. To create an experience where they forget everything else except what you’re doing on the stage, or writing about, or singing about.
Sure there will always be critics, readers, and self-appointed assholes who act as creative police or get paid to tear creatives and their art apart.
Fuck those ↑ people. Those people are not the audience i’m talking about. Because being a performer – or writer, or actress, or painter, or designer – is all about creating an experience, not about getting it all right.
Because guess what?
It’ll never be perfect.
But imperfection is never an excuse to do a half-ass job of creating + being art.
Imperfection should drive you to work that much harder on stage, on the page, on your medium – to deliver the perfect experience and escape for every.single.member of your audience.
Seek that perfection.
Love, light + experience making,
b
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