We recently rewatched a few episodes of the Sky Arts series Reinventing the Orchestra with Charles Hazlewood, and in one of them, Charles talks to the conceptual, video and installation artist Jeremy Deller, who had this magnificent thing to say:
“It’s just people saying yes, that’s how you make art and make things happen, it’s someone just saying yes, and that’s all you want.”
My first thought on hearing this was to agree with him whole-heartedly. He’s not wrong. It really is as nakedly, deceptively, shockingly simple as that. A yes from the right organisation or even the right single person at the right moment can enable virtually anything to happen.
But I also have to confess my second thought, exorcise it, and then move on from it. Because my inner cynic (who thinks like many people that have ever had any kind of career in the cultural sector, I’m sure) quickly remembered how much more common it is to encounter a no than a yes. But that way bitterness and resentment lie, and I’m done with all that. So back to the power of yes again.
I was a bit disingenuous just now, when I wrote about the enabling force of a yes from organisations or influential individual figures. That’s always been true in every aspect of the subsidised and commercial cultural sectors — and that’s something we all know already. Partnerships and collaborations are great, and often essential in this increasingly expensive and increasingly risk-averse world that we find ourselves in. Art-making of a certain size or scale can usually only happen when the resource-rich are prepared to say yes to the resource-poor. But these relationships can easily veer into being transactions in disguise, and tend to make us fall into the Permission Trap (more on that another time), or else get bogged down in the sticky swamp of writing for the market/the money/the funder/the commissioner/the venue/the publisher (more on that another time, too).
They are not the only answer.
What I’ve been learning over the last 18 months is something that I think gets talked about much less frequently, but which is, in its own way, a greater enabler, a more radical one, a more achievable one, albeit one that may be harder to sustain when you’ve got bills to pay.
Simply put, it involves saying yes to yourself, for yourself.
I’ll be talking about success in an upcoming post, so won’t dwell on it now, but if your definitions of success are measured by money, by books/tickets/copies sold, by sales rankings or awards or recognition, then this post, this website, and indeed this writer, are not for you.
If you’re still here, I’ll elaborate. Everyone is in a position to do two things, any time they like:
- Decide that you are going to make art
- Make art
You do this by saying yes to yourself, for yourself. You do this through an intentional gesture: you decide that making art is sufficiently important to you that you will actively, consciously protect time in your day/week/year in order to actually spend that time making art.
(I am losing patience more and more often with people who tell me they “haven’t got time”, “can’t find the time”, “can’t spare the time” to write their play, finish their novel, commit to a course of classes, practice their instrument.
They’re falling into the If Only Trap (more on that another time, too): “if only” they didn’t have this job/these kids/those commitments, they’d easily make time to make art — but they do, so they don’t. To quote Sandra Hüller in Justine Triet’s magnificent film Anatomy of a Fall: “You complain about the life you chose. You are not a victim.”
Make art in spite of all the reasons and forces and pressures lined up to prevent you. Do it anyway. Find a way. Reclaim your time.)
I soothe and placate some of these people by encouraging them to do fifteen minutes each day, or one day each week, or some other arbitrary but talismanic-sounding unit of art-making time in order to establish some kind of regular practice. What I am really trying to get them to do, by stealth, is say yes to themselves, for themselves.
(I actually think the concept of having a regular practice is something best designed to sell books about making art to those who want to read about making art instead of actually making art. Anyone who is truly serious about making art gets on and does it by choosing to get on and do it: there’s no need for them to be told to schedule anything. It matters, so it happens.)
I desperately want these people to tap into their own power to say yes to themselves because the making of the art isn’t always an entire end in itself. It’s often also a means to other immensely valuable (actually, invaluable) ends, around well-being, self-worth, and a healthier state of mental health. Why anyone wouldn’t make an active choice to reach for those things is beyond me.
In order to say yes to one thing, you have to say no to another. That’s how time is protected. That’s how the art gets made. But it starts with you, saying yes to yourself, for yourself.
Try it, just once, this week or this month, and make some art, and see how it feels. I can already tell you how it’ll feel. And I think you know already too, without me needing to tell you.
