Monday, July 13, 2009

Should one do stuff?

Lately I´ve been confronted with a lot of "shoulds" somehow. As I occationally am active in many areas, for example music, drawing, writing and such, it has always been an issue for me to figure out what I ACTUALLY want to do and perhaps SHOULD do.

Let´s say I´ve made some music. It sometimes happens that people encourage me to make music for commercials or say "you could make some a cappella arrangements of some Michael Jackson songs",
or let´s say I´ve made a good drawing, and people (including myself, sometimes) say; oh, you could be an illustrator,
or I go to the forest and people instantly think one should write an article for let´s say HBL.
And I think it´s good to have opportunities and many possibilities to do a lot of things EVEN if it probably would turn out to be just shit, no doubt, but the question I ask myself is WHY we always should strive for getting seen, getting known or selling your possible talents to OTHER PEOPLE?

If life is about to have fun, I could have a lot of fun with making music for commercials or illustrating, or even do photos (I always forget that I actually went to school to become a photographer). But I don´t want to. Striving for always doing better and better bores me to death and kills the intution and true inspiration.
Lately a guy from Garageband told me about the Spider-song, that "if the right people in New York heard this you'd be a cult figure overnight" and I got flattered for sure, but in a while I asked myself who the f**k "the right people" are, and if I´d really like to become a name among those "right people in NY"?
Wait a minute.
No!

5 comments:

M. Lindman said...

Good points. I ask myself these questions every day. "Shit....for whom AM I writing...?"

ponks said...

Yes! I think is very important to keep on doing things for yourself (or some certain person that you feel understands you) in order to keep trustworthy.
And, just do what you´re good at!

I´ve realised lately I´ve been trying to play music that I am not really meant for playing (I´ve tried to take in political points, while I´m all about emoooootioooon, haha) and it turns out CRAP. Neither I nor people believe in what I´m saying, cause everyone knows I am hell not interested in politics AT ALL, haha.
But sometimes you want to try out new things, I guess.

M. Lindman said...

:)
But on the other hand, about doing something crappily: I am sometimes annoyed at myself for not allowing myself to do something badly. I get caught up in the idea that skills are to be refined and that there's no point in doing stuff if you are not a god damn MASTER. (I guess I gave up writing poetry for this reason...) This particular fear has kept me off doing all kinds of stuff I have no clue how to go about.

ponks said...

true true that!
of course one should have the (call it artistic) freedom to do what ever one wants to do, even if it doesn´t turn out a masterpiece.
maybe that´s a typical Finnish problem too, cause here at times you can feel you´re not allowed to express yourself about something if you haven´t studied it for years..
i have the same issues with everything i do. first i start out having fun with something new, but sooner or later i get trapped with the idea that it should be better. and better, and better. och så är helvetet löst when you start to COMPARE yourself to others or IMITATE or all these unnecessary hobbies.
:)

John Dantzer said...

i agree. Life is too short to be playing to the crowd. Success will happen in your brain and heart if you stay true to yourself.