Be that something interesting

If you were given a camera would you know how to create with it? Could you be Adams or Leibovitz? What about a guitar; could you be Vaughn or Clapton? What about a pencil; could you be Da Vinci or Dali? What about a stone block; could you be Houser, Remington or DuBuffet? The answer is probably not. Why not? The answer to that is complicated, yet very simple. Let’s go for the complex answer first.

First, let’s ask “Why would you want to be like or create like someone else?” If every woman in the world looked like Jodie Foster or Milla Jovovich how boring would the world be. What if everybody could own a red Porsche; how boring would traffic on the road be? What if every photograph looked like Adams or Arias; would we have the unique works of Leibovitz’s John Lennon and Yoko Ono or Capa’s Omaha Beach? If Eddie Adams shot like or even shot the same subjects as Arias, would we have been exposed to “Murder of a Vietcong by Saigon Police Chief”? Most definitely not; I am sure.

If you’re not getting my point yet, let me put in terms of food, one of my favorite subject to work with and consume. What if all ice cream was chocolate? What if all cheeseburgers came without bacon (oh the humanity)? What if all vegetables tasted like cauliflower? Our dining life would be pretty plain; a little vanilla and lacking a certain zest and spice. It is the variety in our life that makes things interesting and keeps us coming back for more.

Art is the exact same thing. We do what we do and how we do it because of our need of variety. Stop trying to be someone you aren’t; someone you will never be. At least this is part of the reason.

While you can mimic your favorite artists’ styles, your own style should shine through otherwise there is nothing of you in your art. One of the worst comments I could ever receive is, “This image reminds me of Dorethea Lange” or “This short story reminds me of Stephen King”. Now, please don’t get me wrong, I am not in any way comparing myself to those two fantastic artists; my ego is completely in check. What I am saying is that my greatest fear is that I might be told that my work resembles them more than me. If that were to happen, then I would write myself off as a failure and walk away from that piece forever. I don’t want to mimic their work, even if I could.

Here’s a little secret about me. I am still an old school paper-bound-book buyer. In the age of digital, holding a smart phone or a digital book reader feels all too sterile for me. The smell of the ink burned into the pages and the tactile feel of the coarse paper should be part of the experience of reading the book. There you go…. a previously little known secret about me. One more is that I find it completely disrespectful to dog-ear the pages; nope not even magazines.

Oops. That was a tangent. There was purpose of talking about books. Before I buy a book, I read the reviews on the back and inside covers. I have a great deal of respect when other authors comment about how great the book of this particular author is or how it may have moved or inspired them. But a review that compares the book to another more popular book or one author to a more successful author, I put the book down and will never buy, read it or think about it again. If I want to read Stephen King, I will buy Stephen King. If I want to read Erma Bombeck I will buy Erma Bombeck.

I hold other art forms in the same regards. Movies, music, drawings, painting, sculpting, photography and poetry all have to be original and compelling. If I want to listen to Johnny Cash I am not going to buy vinyl from an artist that sounds like Johnny Cash. I will simply buy Johnny Cash. There is only one band that sounds like Metallica. There is only one voice like Fiona Apple. There is only one Mozart, one Etta James, one MC5. This is probably why I don’t watch, follow or even care about sports. I know that this drives many of my friends, particularly of the male persuasion, absolutely nuts. Sports are repetition. Sport is a huge bore for me because of the repetition. In golf, there is the tee off, the drive, the green. Rinse and repeat. In football there is the kick off, the drive, the touchdown or turnover. Rinse and repeat. Nascar, there is the start, the laps mixed in with an accident or two, then the finish. Rinse and repeat.

In the end, there is only one you. There may others that are like you, but you are unique. Make your voice/vision be heard and seen. Be original because that is what moves people and this is what should come naturally to you. Be yourself in your art simply because you are unique.

And the final reason I have that you can’t be like anyone else; you did not have the pleasure, or displeasure, of walking in their shoes. You had your own shoes and you walked your own miles in this life and therefore have had different experiences influence your development. I could get all scientific and say that when you experienced a certain pain or joy in your life, you experienced it differently at age nine than you would have at age 12 due to different active regions of brain and different tools for managing processing and reaction. But that is boring. So let me bring something a little more meaningful into this explanation, at least from my point of view.

There are two men in a fox hole.  Both are armed with the same military issued rifles and armors. Both are equipped with the same military training. Both are equipped with same strategic plan, to hold the hill. Why is it when the action reaches their doorstep they react differently? After an artillery round lands ten feet away one of the men may panic and flee or simply take cover and begin prayer while the other charges or begin screaming at the top of his lungs while firing wildly in hopes of getting lucky. Why don’t they react the same? It is because they are not the same. Their history has shaped who they are.  

Much in the same way, you are not Ansel Adams. He is a different person that you. He saw the world through a completely different set of synaptic responses than you did. In many cases he had many different experiences than you did. So even if you were standing by his side with your camera in hand snapping a shot of Half Dome, your images would have been completely different, even straight out of camera.

To be honest, I have seen much better photographs of Half Dome than Adams ever produced. But if those individuals had tried to be like Adams, their work would have never caught my attention. Their work would have simply been vanilla. Adams set the bar, I will not argue that. But our goal should never be to reach the bar; our goal needs to be to surpass it. Each and every one of us are capable of surpassing  that bar regardless of how high we feel it might be.

I don’t care if someone likes or dislikes my work. I care if they experience it. If my work looks like everything else they have seen, then they will bypass it. They will move on to something else, something new. Something interesting. So why not be that something interesting. Be you.