In this chapter we’ll look at the rich and complex idea of identity and how it relates to your quest for your best life in the arts.
Consider the following two headlines. First, it is much harder to fashion a life in the arts if you do not strongly identify as an artist. Second, a vast array of subidentities is available to you — you may decide to see yourself as a beautifier, an activist, a bohemian, a problem solver, a shaman — and this array has real value to you. You’ll see what I mean as we proceed.
Let’s begin with seven core ideas about identity:
1. Our identities are made up of many self-identifications that in any given person might include Jew, painter, Bostonian, woman, and on and on. But we are different from and bigger than all those self-identifications. The concept of “identity” is not equivalent to the concept of “self.” To make a metaphor out of it, “self” is that inner Cartesian stage in which everything we think and feel plays itself out; some of the things that play themselves out are our self-identifications. We can step back from our sense of identity and decide how we want to identify ourselves.
2. We don’t know and can’t know which of our self-identifications are hardwired into us and which arise by a combination of happenstance and affinity. It seems likely that our sexual orientation is hardwired into us, but is being a Jew or a Christian? It seems even less likely that anyone is hardwired to be a Bostonian or a New Yorker. But what about being a writer, painter, filmmaker, or musician? If by some chance a self-identification like that is hardwired into us, then we are going to feel miserable not doing that work, just as we would feel miserable not pursuing our sexual preferences because of cultural injunctions. On the other hand, if being a writer, painter, filmmaker, or musician is “just” a matter of happenstance and affinity, then it would run much less deep than something like sexual preference and, by running less deep, need a lot of work to manifest and maintain. Let me repeat this point simply: if being a writer is hardwired in you, you are going to feel bad not writing; and if it isn’t hardwired in you, then you are going to have to pay attention to it so that it doesn’t recede or even vanish.
3. This means that if we aren’t writing and we feel the need to write — if, that is, when we’re not writing, something in us feels off or missing — that may mean that writing is somehow hardwired into us and we are forcibly ignoring it, or it may mean that our writer identity is circumstantial and real but too weak to manifest itself. In either case, the answer is to write. Let me repeat this point simply: If we feel that we should be writing (or painting or filmmaking or composing) and we aren’t writing, we may be negatively affecting our mental health by not taking one of our identity pieces seriously enough. If by not writing you are denying your identity, that can’t be good for your emotional health.
4. The identity you manifest is significantly influenced by circumstance. Your self-identification as a Jew will come forward when you read a book about peace in the Middle East and recede when you read a book about flowers of the Northwest. You read the former as a Jew, so to speak, but you read the latter as a botanist, as a painter, or just as a human being. This is a very important point, because it means that in most situations you will react out of one of your primary self-identifications, reacting as a woman first, or as a Jew first, or as an African American first, or as a mother first; and your artist identity may not make itself felt in that moment unless you are very accustomed to leading with that identity.
5. It follows from the previous points that it is on your shoulders to nurture and pay attention to your artist identity. That identity can’t take care of itself. To put it in simple terms, if you intend to keep writing over the long haul, day in and day out and year in and year out, you will need to strengthen your identity as a writer. Shortly we’ll look at ways of doing exactly that.
6. At first glance this point seems a bit contradictory to the last point: we want to strongly identify as human beings. That is, different from and apart from all our individual self-identifications, we need a strong self that serves as our executive and that is separate from and larger than any self-identification. Our primary identity needs to be that of human being rather than that of Jew, painter, Bostonian, woman, and so on, because it is only as a complete person that we can know what we value and what meaning we intend to make. To make a small joke of it, letting the Bostonian in you decide where you will live means that you have no chance of ever leaving Boston. You want to make decisions of that sort as a whole person, not from a part of your self that is rooting for a certain outcome.
7. Related to the last two points, you must learn how to fully inhabit an identity when that serves you and also how to detach from that identity when doing so serves you better. You fully inhabit the identity of writer when you want to write, and you fully inhabit the identity of a complete person when you want to make a moral judgment or a life decision. If you let yourself overinvest in any given self-identification, you veer toward unhealthy narcissism, as with the writers of yesteryear who felt no shame in saying things like “I don’t care how hard my wife has to work or how many people I exploit, just as long as I get my novel written.” Yes, you want to inhabit your artist identity; but you mustn’t forget that you are a human being first and foremost before you are an artist.
Strengthening Your Identity as an Artist
To repeat, you want to lead your life as a whole person. You also want to strongly identify as the artist you intend to be. Here, then, are ten tips for strengthening your identity as an artist, using as our example the identity of filmmaker:
1. Get in the habit of saying, “I am a filmmaker.” Just as it is powerful and useful for an alcoholic to say, “I am an alcoholic” out loud at an AA meeting, it is likewise powerful and useful for a filmmaker, even one who hasn’t yet made any films, to say both internally and publicly, “I am a filmmaker.”
When someone asks you what you do, you say, “I’m a filmmaker with a day job” rather than “I sell shoes at Macy’s.” There is a world of difference between these two ways of identifying yourself: the first allows you to think about film, talk about film, network about film, and be a filmmaker; the second does no such thing.
2. If you want to strengthen your identity as a filmmaker, ask yourself, “What does it mean to be a filmmaker?” or “What do I mean when I say that I’m a filmmaker?” The first and obvious answer will be “Well, it means that I make films!” But it also means many other things, from, for instance, reading books about how independent films are financed to taking trips that allow you to visit interesting film festivals. Sit down and ascertain what being a filmmaker means to you.
3. Prepare answers to the questions that, when put to you, cause you to lose your will to call yourself a filmmaker. One such question might be “Have you made any films yet?” A second question might be “Would I have heard of any of your films?” A third question might be “Do you have to finance your films yourself — are they the equivalent of self-publishing or vanity publishing?”
Maybe, because you make shorts that are ten or twenty minutes long, being asked, “How long are your films?” causes you to sink. Bravely articulate the questions that bother you, embarrass you, weaken you, or stop you — and create answers. For instance, to the question “Have you made any films yet?,” your prepared answer might be “I’m working on one right now on the theme of immigration — care to invest in it?”
4. Do the various things that a filmmaker does. This means more than just “make films.” It means understanding how films get made from both a technical and a financial standpoint. It means forming working relationships with people who can help you. It means learning to use language in rhetorically strong ways so that you make your films sound interesting to investors and audiences. It means understanding how to audition actors and how to work with casting directors. It means wooing rich people and learning how to negotiate with the moneyed class. It means engaging in apprenticeship activities that serve you. These are the sorts of things that filmmakers do — and to solidify your self-identification as a filmmaker, you want to do them too.
5. Create opportunities to be a filmmaker. In school, opportunities are regularly created for students to make and show films. Then, once you graduate, those ready-made opportunities vanish, and you must enter the real world. In the real world, you must create your opportunities to make films, efforts that might include choosing a project with a lot of appeal, getting your script or storyboard done quickly, inviting friends to invite their friends to help with the financing, and using Internet fund-raising sites to raise money. The shorthand for all this is: work. Making a film is work, but creating the opportunity to make that film is work as well.
6. Seize the opportunities given to you to be a filmmaker. If someone says, “I’m looking for an assistant director on my next film,” you can respond with anxiety by saying, “Oh, I’m not ready for that!,” you can respond with stubborn pride, “Oh, no, it’s director or nothing for me!,” or you can ask for details and see if this opportunity serves you. If you judge that it might, seize it. You want to incline yourself toward accepting opportunities rather than rejecting them, just as long as you have tried your best to judge the viability of the project and the professionalism of the players involved.
7. Notice if and when your filmmaker identity begins to weaken or vanish. This happens most characteristically when you’ve spent too much time not operating as a filmmaker: that is, as the months go by and you neither plan nor make films. During those sad months it is entirely likely that you will begin to think of yourself less and less as a filmmaker. You want to notice that this is happening, even though it is painful to notice, and admit to yourself that your identity is eroding.
8. Know what to do when your identity of filmmaker begins to weaken or vanish. What will your game plan be? It can’t be to instantly make a full-length movie: you don’t have that sort of control over life. Nor should it be “I think I’ll watch a few movies,” an effort that is completely in your control but doesn’t sufficiently strengthen your identity of filmmaker. It might be to turn over your morning creativity practice to getting your script written; it might be to start to engage in three fund-raising efforts daily; it might be to reconnect with those folks who have shown a little interest in you as a filmmaker and remake their acquaintance. You want a game plan in place so that when your identity of filmmaker weakens you’ll know exactly what useful things you can do.
9. Know what to do when you think you’ve lost your right to call yourself a filmmaker because you haven’t made a film in five years, because your last film was roundly panned, or because you have to pay for making your films yourself. None of these events should lose you your right to call yourself a filmmaker — that will happen only if you let it happen. When you feel as if you’ve lost that right, what will you do? At the very least, resume saying, “I am a filmmaker!” internally and publicly. Know exactly what you are going to do when you feel your right to call yourself a filmmaker slipping away.
10. Make the support of your artist identity something like a practice by paying daily attention to it, maybe in your morning meaning check-in or maybe in some other way. You want daily contact with that identity, you want to know daily whether or not you are manifesting your artist identity, and if you aren’t manifesting it, you want to take some action to manifest it on that very day. Naturally, you want to be a filmmaker every day, but equally important, you want to support your identity of filmmaker every day. There may be days when you don’t work on your film, but there should be no days when you don’t feel like a filmmaker.
Your Whole Self and Your Artist Self
What is the relationship between your whole self and your artist self? This is a tremendously important subject because you want your whole self to be the monitor for all your self-identifications — Jew, woman, Bostonian, painter — so that you don’t become drawn in directions you don’t want to go just because something happens that pulls at one of those self-identifications.
Consider the following seven points:
1. You are a whole person who is also an artist. You need to maintain an important primary relationship between you as a whole person and you as an artist, so that the “whole you” is in charge and keeps an eye on all your self-identifications, just as a third-grade teacher might mind her eight-year-olds.
To take a simple example, your writer identity may be hungry to do something fun, but your whole self may understand that you have a book to write that is more important than the fun book but also more like sheer slogging work than enjoyment. You want your whole self deciding these matters, just as you would want the teacher and not the eight-year-olds running the class.
2. Next is the matter of keeping your eye on your values and principles. Your artist identity may want to make meaning in a certain way, say, by using some Native American imagery in your next suite of paintings. But your whole self may have something to say about the rightness or value of expropriating imagery from another culture.
You may want to paint something because it strikes you as arresting or beautiful, but you still want your whole self to ask the question “Are there other considerations here besides beauty?” You might think of this as mind monitoring heart or as conscience monitoring ego, but probably the best way to think of it is as your whole self monitoring your artist self. If your whole self is monitoring your artist self, then you will make not only meaning but value-based meaning.
3. There is an important difference between monitoring your self-identifications, which is a good thing, and using this idea of identity as yet another way not to get on with your creative work. I think you can see how you might use this executive function idea as a way to doubt yourself or your current creative project. Say that you’ve decided to abstract some pine trees into geometric shapes, and let’s say your first results aren’t all that pleasing to you. Using this idea of whole self monitoring artist self, you might say to yourself, “Gee, I wonder if abstracting these pine trees is really a valuable idea?” and cast the whole project in doubt.
In some instances this may be a proper question, but very often — maybe most often — it will just be a reaction to difficulty and a way to avoid the pain of process. Do not use this idea of monitoring as a way to avoid hard work or as a way to evade the realities of process.
4. Running a bit counter to the previous points, you want to strongly hold and cherish those self-identifications that you want to hold and cherish, like the identity of artist. Sometimes you’ll have to tell your whole self, “Hey, self, I know I’m obsessing a lot about this novel and writing day and night, but please don’t bug me about my ‘whole self’ right now — I need to be writing!”
Usually you will lead with your whole self but sometimes you will want to honor and give free rein to your artist self, so it follows that these inner relationships will produce real conflicts — and conflicts generate anxiety. This means that you will want to have your anxiety-management tools at the ready to deal with these identity issues, because as abstract as they may seem in this discussion, they are very real and will cause real conflicts in your being.
5. Just as the tension between your whole self and your various self-identifications produces anxiety, the following dynamic does as well. Your whole self is not a static entity, and neither are your self-identifications. This ongoing shifting and changing causes discomfort and uncertainty, because somewhere in our minds we presume or hope that we have “settled down by now” into some stable something — and we sense that we haven’t.
There is really no reason to suppose that we will ever settle down in this way, not as long as life presents us with new experiences and not as long as we ourselves desire to grow and change. Expect this regular shifting of identity, and when it comes, have your anxiety-management tools ready so you can deal with the anxiety such shifting naturally provokes.
6. When you learn how to operate from your whole self, rather than reacting in a knee-jerk way from one or another of your many self-identifications, you will also learn how to choose which identity piece to respond from. Your whole self has that executive function.
To take a simple example, let’s say that a bit of news about some event in the Middle East stirs and exasperates you. You can react as a Jew, you can react as a pacifist, you can react as a mother, you can react as a poet, but the starting place is to invite your whole self to consider the situation and to express its opinion about which self-identification it wants to nominate. To put it in everyday language, you can decide whether you want to react to the situation as a poet, as a Jew, as a mother, and so on. Honoring this capability is the same thing as making value-based meaning.
7. Seventh and last, this matter of operating from your whole self rather than from any given identity piece is quite significant, because if you fall into the trap of operating too completely or too permanently from one identity piece or another, you may lock yourself into a certain smallness — even if, for example, you get a tremendous amount of painting or writing done.
This is why many highly productive artists also seem immature and incomplete. They have given their artist identify free and full rein and have lost out by not paying sufficient attention to their whole self with its executive-functioning capabilities and its ability to look at the whole story.
Remember: you don’t want to put all your eggs in the basket of any identity piece, even the identity piece of artist. You will remember from our previous discussion how important I think it is that you strengthen your identity as an artist in order to give yourself the chance to be that artist. Here I am saying, do strengthen that identity piece and really feel that you are an artist and really live as an artist but at the same time recognize that you have a whole self that is larger than and different from your identity as an artist.
Let me summarize: 1) We possess many self-identifications and many identity pieces. 2) One of them is the identity of artist, and we want to nurture and strengthen that identity piece so that we can be the artist we want to be. 3) We do not want to strengthen the identity piece of artist in such a way that we fail to live life as a whole person.
Adopting a Public Persona
The large question we’ve touched on in this chapter is “How will you shape your identity?” A second, equally important question is “Who will you be in public?”
The answers to these questions do not have to be the same! You can be much more your “real self” in private and as you create, and rather more of a construction when you operate out in the world, a place of conventions and obligations.
To what extent ought you to be your real self in your public interactions? Think of the elementary school teacher who would love to smile but who has learned that to maintain order in her classroom, she must adopt a certain stern attitude until December. She would love to smile, but she knows better. Like the teacher, you may have very good reasons to adopt a public persona that is different from your everyday or in-studio persona.
There are two ways to think about your public persona. One is that adopting a public persona is a way to practice doing better in public than you typically do in private. You might craft a public persona that allows you to exhibit more confidence than you actually feel, to be clear when in your own mind you feel fuzzy, or to ask pointed questions that you might let slip if you were having a conversation with only yourself. In this sense your public persona can reflect the changes that you would like to make to your personality: in this example, you would actually like to be this more assertive, clearer person.
On the other hand, maybe you are quite happy with who you are in private but recognize that your irony does not play well in public, that your frankness tends to be received as brusqueness, and that the qualities you take pride in have to be modulated in a public setting. In that case, you can create a strategic public persona that matches what the world wants and allows you to interact effectively with customers, collectors, framers, gallery owners, and media representatives.
In the first instance, you are using your public persona both strategically and to improve yourself, and in the second, improvement may not be a goal, but strategic self-presentation certainly is.
If you are not paying attention to the difference between what is required of you in public and what you can permit yourself in private, you are likely to present yourself ineffectively in the marketplace. Indeed, these dynamics are often played out in our artist statements. Many artist statements are abrupt and downright rude, demanding that if the viewer doesn’t “get” the painting, she should immediately take herself to a remedial “What is art?” class. The artist’s resentments, disappointments, and grandiosity spill out into his statement, making for a missive that the artist would call frank but that a viewer knows is combative and defensive.
Just as unfortunate, many artists’ statements have that vague, mind-numbingly abstract quality, so that the artist could be talking about any work or no work. A viewer can’t help but presume that such a statement mirrors the artist’s indecisive, unconfident inner reality. The artist’s intelligence, wit, and humanity do not show through, and all the viewer is left with — regardless of the actual imagery on display — is a stifled yawn.
In both cases the artist has not made a sufficient effort to do the inner work that would result in personality growth on the one hand and the creation of an appropriate public persona on the other.
Donna, a painter, explained, “Whether by nature or nurture, I am a shy person who prefers to spend her time in the studio and who will do almost anything to avoid marketplace interactions. This way of being suited me better when I was learning my craft, since I really did need to focus on what was going on in the studio. But now that I have a body of work — an overflowing body of work — I need to step out into the world in ways that I find strange and uncomfortable. I have to make myself do it — it does not come naturally. I actually have a checklist of the qualities that I want to manifest that I keep by the computer, so that every email I send out is coming from my public persona and not my shy studio personality.”
Steven, a sculptor, reported, “I’ve been in recovery for eight years now. Before that, when I was actively drinking, I always led with my temper. I had an attacking style — I would interrupt you, contradict you, fight you over every detail and the smallest perceived grievance, and always get in the last word. I was angry all the time, which was maybe a good thing with respect to the sculptures, since they had a lot of angry energy to them, but which was not good anywhere else in my life. Over these eight years of recovery, I’ve cultivated a way of being that is more temperate, centered, and essentially gentle. Actually, I’m really still as hard as nails, and people really ought not to cross me; but that part of me is kept under lock and key and almost never appears in public.”
An artist’s public persona is a thoughtful, measured presentation of the artist as she puts forward those qualities that she has identified as serving her best in the public arena. What qualities would you like to lead with in your public interactions? How would you like to be perceived? What public persona would allow you to advocate for your work most effectively? Build that persona and try it out — in public, naturally!
The Evidence of Your Eyes
Frances had come to narrative painting late in life, after twenty years as a corporate lawyer. Her paintings were large and powerful, and they sold well. But she had the hardest time not bad-mouthing them, both during the full four months it took her to paint one and after each was done.
“I think I want a different way of working,” she said in our first session. “I want to paint more loosely; I want to paint more quickly — four months on one of these paintings almost kills me!”
I smiled. “Yes, maybe it would be nice if the process were a little less painful. Not pain free — that might be too much to ask. But just a little less painful?”
“I need to get the details right,” she proceeded, not quite listening. “So, there I am, working on this or that detail, and while I’m working on the detail the whole thing seems dead to me. I keep asking myself, ‘What’s the point?’ and ‘Who would want this?’ and ‘Is this any good?’ I might spend a whole day painting a hand, getting it right, and that whole day I’m bitching to myself.”
I nodded. “Is part of it coming to painting later in life?”
“Probably,” she said. “But how do you mean?”
“If you felt that you were born to paint and had been drawing and painting forever, you might doubt a given painting but not doubt yourself so much. It sounds like you aren’t just doubting the painting in front of you but doubting whether you’re an artist.”
She answered instantly. “I do doubt that! I don’t have any confidence that I am an artist.”
“Even though people buy your paintings? Even though people praise them? Even though you yourself respect them — when you aren’t bad-mouthing them?”
She shrugged. “People buy stupid things all the time, things of no value. That my paintings sell doesn’t prove much to me. The praise — well, I don’t know that I respect the people who praise my work all that much. And as for my own opinions — I guess I am deeply not sure whether or not I respect them.”
I wanted to whistle. That was a lot of doubting!
“Let’s come at it from a slightly different angle,” I said. “What would be different if you started each painting from the sure place that you were an artist? If you were always saying to yourself, ‘I have no doubt that I’m an artist, no matter how my current painting is going’?”
She thought about that. “I think it would actually make a huge difference. I would have — faith is probably the word — faith that the painting had a chance of turning out well. As opposed to my current mind-set, which is that it really has no chance. It would make a huge difference.” She glanced at me. “But of course I would have to believe it — just saying it wouldn’t mean much. I’m not into fooling myself.”
“So, it would be nice if you believed that you were an artist. We both agree on that. But sales of your paintings won’t convince you of that, praise won’t convince you of that, and looking at your paintings doesn’t convince you of that. What would?”
“The looking part. If, when I looked at a painting of mine, I could honestly say, ‘I’m satisfied with that.’ ”
“And sometimes you are able to say that?”
“Yes. But then I don’t trust my own judgment.”
“So, let me see if I’ve got it. You can’t call yourself an artist unless what you see in front of you convinces you that you are an artist, but even when what you see in front of you seems to prove that you are an artist, you still doubt your eyes. Does that sound like a fair paraphrase?”
She sat thinking. “It does.”
“Then you see the problem, yes?”
She nodded after a bit. “I may be very talented at doubting what I see in front of me. In which case I may never be able to say, ‘Aha, there’s the proof!’ It may be right there, but I might refuse to accept it.”
We sat quietly.
“You can see the sort of chicken-and-egg problem we have,” I said. “You can’t say that you’re an artist until your eyes confirm it — and your eyes may never confirm it.”
“Even if the proof is right there in front of me,” she said thoughtfully.
She had a lot to think about. I let her think. I could imagine her train of thought. Doubtless she would keep circling back to a couple of questions: “Is my work good, or isn’t it?” and “Compared to what?” and “How can I know?”
“I could, as a linguistic matter, start to say ‘I am an artist,’ ” she finally said. “As a kind of affirmation or wish — or prophecy. Even if I didn’t believe it—”
“Maybe. That’s possible. But I’d like you to try something different — something more ambitious,” I said, smiling. “It’s a change in your vision of the truth of the matter. I would like you to really believe something that I know you sometimes believe — that you are an artist.” I paused. “You do sometimes believe that?”
“I do.”
“And then you talk yourself out of that belief?”
“Exactly.”
“That’s what needs to stop happening.”
How odd to have to arm-wrestle someone who was obviously an artist into the belief that she was an artist! What powerful reasons must be involved in her refusal! I waited. She couldn’t quite get there. I could see the frustration in her eyes. She couldn’t convince herself that she was an artist.
“All right,” I said. “Let’s go the other route. The linguistic one.”
“And fake it until I make it.”
“Exactly. You will now begin to say ‘I am an artist’ as an affirmation and prophecy.”
She nodded.
“Whether or not what you see on the canvas convinces you.”
She nodded.
“As a way of opening the door to what I wish you already could acknowledge, that you are an artist.”
She couldn’t nod to this. But she didn’t turn away from it either.
Your Artist Identity
In this chapter I’ve tried to tease out some of the more important ideas about identity. If you’d like to continue this exploration, answer the following questions:
• What are your primary self-identifications (man, Baptist, American, Republican)?
• Is “real artist” one of your primary self-identifications?
• What do you think is the importance (or lack of importance) of self-identifying as a “real artist”?
• What in-studio identity do you want to cultivate and adopt?
• What public persona do you want to craft and present?
Let’s tie a few of these ideas together. You will feel more confident (the confidence key) if you strongly identify as an artist. You will experience less stress (the stress key) if you use your executive function to make strong, smart decisions about how you intend to identify yourself. You will do a better job of relating (the relationship key) once you realize that you can craft and hone a public persona of your own choosing. Even though “identity” is an abstract idea, it has tremendous real-world consequences and applications. It will benefit you to take some time and sit with the puzzle that is your identity.