lessons from rock-n-roll legends
Last night, J wrangled me into going to see a Led Zeppelin documentary. While I did not know much about them, beyond a basic acquaintance with Robert Plant/ Jimmy Page and their bluesy late 60s/ early 70s sound (I didn't even realize they were from the UK!) afterwards we found ourselves at odds over what made the doc more interesting, ie. J wanted more long samples of concerts, and I, averse as I am to long self-indulgent guitar solos, actually wanted more discussion about creative process. About how the sound and band and creative dynamics under surface of the music more than the music itself. What stood out to me was how they just decided what they wanted to do and did it. What they wanted to create and created it. Sure, they dealt with music industry people, but actually after those first couple albums were already a wrap. And listeners and radio play could not get enough of it.
Also what stood out to me was he confidence they had, though maybe its all in hindsight. Of course they were successful and that success can make you speak more generously about your intentions decades later. But in their recall, there wasn't a lot of self-doubt and imposter syndrome. Maybe its just musicians vs. writers. I have rarely met a writer who believes wholeheartedly in their own genius (and if I did, they were really overhyping themselves and usually men.) Is it a gender thing? The way women and girls are conditioned to not be too confident in their abilities or vision? To question constantly and always feel like an outsider? To get worried you are being annoying or just too, too much?
I love sharing work, but every once in a while, when posting a poem or lit news, or even sending something out, I have moments of self-doubt. Even when I was checking all the boxes a writer is supposed to check, I more often than not felt like I had just lucked out, or snuck in a back door. That other people belonged in spaces far more than I did. That it was a fluke I was even publishing or that people wanted to read my work at all. It still feels like this sometimes. The voices at my back are vicious decades later-- the unecessarily mean comments of my fellow MFA students, the person I trusted as an advisor who basically Mean Girl-ed (You can't sit with us...) while pretending to be a feminist. I literally used to take the kind and effusive journal acceptances in my notebook to class to focus on while the poems, sometimes the same poems, were being ripped apart, mostly with unhelpful comments like "This is boring." "Write another poem." Things people in public places or to my face have said about my work. I have a thick skin...but there are behaviors I would never condone, or engage in myself no matter how much I disliked someone's writing or them as a person.
All of which, of course, has very little to do with the writing itself. Actually pretty much nothing at all. I long ago stopped caring if people liked what I write (awesome if they do, but otherwise, just move along.) I found myself wishing, in that dark movie theater, though that I had even a fraction of that certainty and ease when it came to creating. That it would have made things so much easier in those years where I was struggling and I think me and my creative life would have been so much happier. I got there eventually, but it took a long time and much bullshittery..
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