The deep cuts

No matter how flamboyant you are, there are those who will never notice you. (Image credit)

I love Elton John. Love, love Elton John.

I have many happy memories from childhood, adolescence, and throughout my adult life that involved Elton John’s music. I’ve listened to his songs on repeat, sung them at family gatherings, and even performed them onstage. I have the utmost respect for Elton’s musical talent (not to mention that of his longtime collaborators).

And yet, I can’t say that I’ve heard every single song in his catalog, or even every album. And in truth, some of Elton John’s songs make me cringe. Some are even terrible.

As much as I love Elton John, I haven’t read his autobiography, and I’ve never attended a single one of his concerts.

As a creator, I find it strangely soothing that I can love an artist so much and also be indifferent to or turned off by some of his offerings. It offers some useful perspective for evaluating the response to my own work. It allows me to adjust my expectations. Not everyone has time for the deep cuts.

I know that people subscribe to my blog and don’t read it. I know that some people like it but don’t subscribe. I know that there are people who like me and have zero interest in reading my blog (my husband is one of them). That’s totally fine with me. I skip stuff that comes into my inbox all the time—stuff by people I admire—and there are a ton of people I admire and don’t subscribe to in the first place. I get it.

Of course, there are also plenty of people who don’t like me or my work. Sometimes, they make a point of telling me so. I guess that’s life. I’m sure Elton John has faced far worse. When we share things with the world, we are guaranteed to face indifference and will likely encounter criticism in addition to praise. It’s all part of the game.

I wish I had understood this sooner; I wasted a lot of time waiting for someone to care about what I was making, hoping for the validation that would give me the confidence and certitude to continue. What I’ve learned is that my confidence and certitude has to come from within. If I want to do something, it may be awhile before anyone pays attention; I have to find a way to keep going in the meantime. It’s not personal.

How do you know whether your thing will ultimately be successful? How do you know whether it’s good enough? You don’t. If you can handle that, go ahead and push through; if you can’t, that’s perfectly reasonable. The creative journey is just one of many you can take. It’s not like success fixes things, as Elton John would readily attest.

If I want to get past that initial awful feeling of launching something into the void—the song with no listens, the post with no views, the photo with no likes—I just have to keep showing up. There is no guarantee that anyone will find my work or appreciate it, but if I burrow into my hole and never put anything out there, it’s guaranteed that no one will find it or appreciate it. So that is the deal.

Part of what makes it so difficult to keep up with a creator like Elton John is that he just keeps going, more than a half century after his first hit. But whether I keep up with his prodigious output is not his problem. He makes what he makes because he wants to. It’s got nothing to do with me and whether I listen to it or like it.

I aspire to be that way. I have figured out how to do that in some areas of life, and I think I’m ready to try others. But it’s okay if you are too busy to listen. You can ignore the deep cuts—or even my whole oeuvre. I totally understand.