Don’t Do It? Bite Me!

This weekend I had Another Interesting Conversation. And why was it interesting? Well, because it not only annoyed me, but after thinking about it for a while, I decided it actually offended me, which is a much more rare occurrence these days.

Here’s what happened:

Walking around through an art fair, I stopped to speak with a photographer upon whose display walls hung some really neat landscape shots. After complimenting him quite sincerely, I asked how long he’d been working as a professional photographer. “Oh, only a couple of years,” he told me. “Since I retired, really.”

“Oh,” said I, innocently, “my husband is thinking about moving into professional freelance photography when he retires. Do you have any advice I can pass along to him?”

“Don’t do it,” was the prompt reply, and I started a slow simmer which, over the next few minutes, only increased as the man began talking about economic woes and how every damnfool with a digital camera these days thinks he’s Ansel Adams. (Both of which points are quite true – and entirely irrelevant to the question I had asked.)

It put me in mind of an old story, which I will have to paraphrase as best I can recall:

A boy who loves to play the violin manages, after much effort, to gain a famous musician as a tutor. During his first lesson, however, the master musician stops the boy and roars, “What is this? I thought you said you were good! This is terrible. You’ll never make a good violinist. You should go home and get a job that can support your family, because you’ll certainly never make any money as a musician!”

 Dejected and heartbroken, the boy runs home, cries for a week, and decides to take the master’s advice. He works hard over the next few years and becomes a successful businessman, pulling in lots of money and having a wonderful life. One day he sees the famous musician passing by and stops him to say thank you. “I’m so glad you told me to give up,” he tells the master. “I never would have been this wealthy and happy as a musician.”

 “Oh,” the master says, “I tell all my new students that. If they run away, then I was right.”

 It’s a harsh attitude to take: that if simply being told you suck at a task is enough to discourage you into giving up, then it wasn’t the right path for you in the first place. I do believe that you have to be willing to be bad at something to ever be good at it. Still, saying, “Don’t do it!” strikes me as equivalent to slamming the door in someone’s face: rude, hostile, and more than a little offensive.

I’ve heard that reply from countless “professionals” across many different fields, and it’s always bugged me. That day just brought a budding annoyance into full bloom, as it were. I would never dream of telling a beginning writer who asks me for tips to just give up. To me, that’s a decisively lazy answer, and one laden with both whine and cheese.

I believe professionals–in any field–have a responsibility to remember how hard it was when we started out, and never lose sight of how much it hurt when those further along the line sneered at our fledgling efforts. I believe we have a responsibility to encourage those behind to keep trying.

Some beginners will drop out without prompting and choose another path; others will beat themselves bloody against a wall they’ll never be able to climb. Some will find a way up, over, through, or around every obstacle, against all odds.

I truly have no idea, when someone asks, “Do you have any advice?”, which sort is standing before me. It’s simply not possible, no matter how familiar I am with someone, to know for sure what might light that final spark to get them moving. And I believe, quite frankly, that we incur a karmic debt every time we kick the door closed in someone’s face; a grey tinge on the soul every time we deliberately hit someone in a weak spot.

I have seen atrocious writing make it into print, crappy photographs held up for sale, and dreadful art hanging in prestigious museums. I have also seen some small presses, individuals, and “amateurs” come out with some of the most stunning, soul-wrenchingly great work I’ve ever seen. But all of that is my opinion, my judgments, not fact–because the quality of anything artistic is relative.

So to tell an aspiring artist in any field “Don’t do it”, smacks to me of hubris and ignorance. Blindly following such advice, on the other hand, smacks of insecurity and naivete. Balanced somewhere between the two is the boy who, when the master said “You’re awful! Go home!” yelled back, “No! Teach me anyway!” . . . and made the master grin with delight.

Where in your life do you need to start yelling back? And why not start today?

Move on to the next rant: “Leona Pulls Out A Knife And Goes To Town“