Let Me Be Bad
People embrace mediocrity all the time. We eat bad pizza, we drink bad coffee. We allow ourselves to be snobs occasionally but we do enjoy bad things. We as a society embrace bad movies as being valuable on sheer entertainment value. We can enjoy mediocrity. When you walk into a karaoke bar you aren’t going in and crossing your fingers that the next Aretha Franklin gets on stage. As amazing as it would be for that to happen, we all know that karaoke is when mediocre singers become pop stars for a night. Although, not everyone has the grace to accept that bad things or things that are done for enjoyment are good. Take this tweet for example
Artists are particularly snobbish. No offense, but I think they sometimes have something to prove. Being a serious artist sometimes makes us take ourselves too seriously. Once in my thesis class one of my best friends, Maria, exclaimed
“Not everything has to have a deeper meaning! Sometimes we just make it!” Which I agreed with. My professor said,
“you do know you’re getting a degree in fine art right?” We die laughing at it now, and we completely understand why he said it in such a way. But to not acknowledge the truth in Maria’s statement would be a disservice to art. Sometimes we just make things, and sometimes we just have to make things. Bad or good, meaning or not, we are all people with desires we so often ignore.
The only way we embrace mediocre things is when we aren’t the ones making, doing, or accomplishing them. I think this sort of mindset and style of living has hindered our ability to do the things we love. I think frequently about being a child and signing up for every sport in the world, doing all the hobbies I felt any ounce of desire to do. Painting pottery, watercolors, soccer, basketball, cheerleading, dance, softball, drawing, and sewing. I was doing everything I loved all the time because I wanted to. The older I got the more the pressure mounted. Only do what you really are passionate about, only do what you’re good at. I didn’t and still don’t believe that this is the proper way to do anything. At the time though, that pressure, that expectation to pick one thing instead of continuing to do what I liked and not what I was good at didn’t make any sense to me. I didn’t understand what I actually wanted until I went to college. Until I was pretty far into college. It became a moment where my perfectionism became such a weight that I said to myself, everything won’t be a masterpiece, but it’s important to the bigger picture to make it anyways. I let myself see my growth. My mom has all my old pottery still. Not because she is my mom either. The terribly glazed, the misshapen bowls, the painfully bad final projects I made. All of it is on display on mantels, in cabinets, and in frequent rotation for dishes. My mom saw it before I did, showcasing what we are doing, not necessarily what we are good at, is the most important performance.
My mom has this infamous story about cooking her first stew. She set out to cook it and she did in some regard, but somewhere along the way it became inedible. I think about this story often because my mom makes truly delectable stew now. To me, a stew is a very hard thing to make and I am sure to my mom it felt hard, but regardless she was willing to try. I love that she did, and I loved that she tried again, proof in the fact that whenever I am having a hard time all I want is her stew. It became so infamous that whenever I found myself not accomplishing the task at hand in any remotely successful way, I tell myself “this is just like mom’s stew” and I try again. It can be anything, taking photos, painting, cooking, even writing. Trying is enough of an accomplishment. That’s what this whole do things badly idea boils down to. Wanting to do something is more than enough reason to try— to continue even. Being good is not a call to keep going, and being bad is not a death sentence. Both are signs of life and you should read them exactly the same.
Some people don’t understand how wanting to is enough. A mentor I had was this way. When I asked for advice on making my first photobook his first question back was, why do you even want to make a photobook? Then described why photobooks were obsolete in our way of viewing photographs. To him, they were dust collectors. To me, it felt like he didn’t understand and thought my desire was delusional. Why go to all this trouble if it will fail? If it won’t do what you want it to do? The point of the photobook was never to be a bestseller, the point was to have it. Wanting to do it, was enough for me. Anyone who bought it was a bonus of accomplishing the goal I had made. Trying it out was my plan, and come to find, I love making photo books. I had always had this deep desire and in letting it free I began researching how to make more, how to make as many as possible. It was a mediocre way to share my photographs in his eyes, but it was the best way to share them in mine. Sometimes the mediocre choice feels like the only one. At the time not choosing the mediocre path felt like sacrificing more of my dream than I was willing.
I made the book anyways. He didn’t buy the book and I am glad my mediocre expensive dust collector sits on someone else’s shelf instead.
He later apologized stating he speaks some harsh truths. I accepted the apology because sometimes the “harsh truth” is really just someone else’s insecurity in being too afraid to do what you are so happy to try and risk failing at.
So what does all this really mean? What is this newsletter if not a mediocre attempt to tell you to just do the things you want? That’s all it really is. I am attempting to convince you to do everything you want to do and embrace that it will probably be mediocre, but that it’s worth doing anyways. This is not a pessimistic outlook either. I think it’s quite an optimistic outlook. I am not saying you’ll be bad at everything, I am saying it’s worth doing even if you are bad. It’s a roundabout way of telling you to trust the process, even if the process means it still turns out eh. I’ll be the first to say it. It’s BORING if someone is good at everything. It’s boring to me when someone is perfect all the time. I don’t like talking to renaissance men and women. WHO CARES IF YOU CAN DO IT ALL?! Show a little humility. That also means all the people who look down on those who love mediocrity. Art films, we love them. But it’s fine if you want to watch Bridget Jones or the content everyone likes. You are not superior if your range only involves high class, you’re BORING. Have the range, please. Paul McCartney almost broke up The Beatles over Maxwell’s Silver Hammer and you won’t watch Jackass?! Get a grip! I edit bad photos, watch bad movies, I love celebrity gossip. I collect only the most interesting of photobooks that come my way, I watch art films, and I make fine art about the most existential questions attempting to answer what it means to be a person. High brow Vs. low brow? Bleach the brows, I am a no-brow woman.
Maybe I am just an artist, so to me, mediocrity is merely a step in the process. Sometimes we only get a little less mediocre at things. Not everyone is on a path to greatness all the time. Greatness is not a synonym for joy. To only do the things we are good at limits our experience of life. I have gone to karaoke many times and I still lack a Grammy. However, the moment I am singing into the microphone with all my friends screaming beside me, I am certain no Grammy could live up to the joy of being there, embracing imperfect pitch and terrible taste. I am fine with being bad, in fact, I am ecstatic to be mediocre. I am tired of the pain of perfectionism. I am tired of everything that causes me grief. I am alive and you are alive and there is more to it all than being good at things. I attempt not to get philosophical but in succumbing to our fears that people will see us trying, we forget that the point is not success or failure, but joy. I know you can do it too. I want to see it. I want to see all the things you’re bad at. Tell me how you ice skated your life away falling every other glide. How at 20, 30, at 60, you still needed the little bar that keeps you from falling. Tell me about the terrible latte you made at home and how you drank it while doing the daily mini crossword which took you an hour to finish. Be human, be bad.
So if you’re making a resolution this year and say you want to read more books, feel free to get that grocery store romance novel under your belt. Read bad books that are entertaining, and write bad books while you’re at it. Go dancing, even though you don’t know how, and have fun anyways. Bake a cake and decorate it to your heart’s content with all the lumpy frosting. Sing karaoke, write bad songs. Paint badly, make a terrible stew and then order bad pizza, draw bad drawings, and don’t be afraid to let people know you’re trying. Go to Blick or Michaels or a craft store and pick something up, make something and hang whatever that is in your bedroom. Invest in the part of yourself that holds these desires and don’t think about anything else. Trust the process and trust that the process is bad but worth it to know you’re doing something out of love. Leave a mark on the world that embraces the joy you feel in doing it.
And just know, I know how hard it is to be bad at something. I know that mediocrity is a cause of tears, a trigger for the realization of all the things you desire that are not in your grasp. That joy can be shadowed by the pain of growth. I’ve been there. I took and continue to take bad photos. The casualties of my rejected photos are far and wide. The number of portfolios I have locked away in my closet for no one to see is endless. But that’s the case for anyone. The mediocrity we face in doing things we desire to be good at is not a whisper to stop. It’s a loud plea telling you to keep going. Wes Anderson talked about how his first film got reviewed by an audience and only one person said something nice. Anthony Bourdain himself said he was not a chef, that he worked brunch shifts at bad joints just to pay the bills. I am certain, the first painting Michelangelo created was not Sistine chapel worthy. It takes mediocrity to make masterpieces. As the saying goes, enter your flop era! But I would like to add to this gen z declaration. I have entered my flop era, and I have made a home here.
This is exactly what i needed to hear right now. :') As I have also made a home in my flop era, I think we'd live next door to one another.