I Don't Care What You Think

At least not in the way you might think.

I’ve come to the conclusion that I can no longer care what you think about my work. And it’s not that I don’t care about you as an audience, but if I’m worried about you liking what I make while I’m still making it or even in deciding what to make, I’m not putting 100% of myself into it. By not caring what you think, I get to put 100% of my ideas, my skills, and my experience—not to mention effort—into what I’m doing, and ultimately that’s better for everyone.

I’ve talked before about how grateful I am to be in the position that I’m in—that I can do (or not do) pretty much whatever I want. But for years there’s been an underlying tension in how to deal with it. What do I do with all of this freedom? I’ve been stuck on questions like “How can I monetize X?” or “What does the audience want me to do?” The problem with both of those questions is that they get in the way of actually making the work that I want to make. For me, money needs to be the byproduct of making art, not the motivator. As for you, the audience, I think you want me to make and do what interests me because that’s what also interests you, at least that’s my hope.

One of the other things that’s sort of come to a head is around social media and self-promotion and to help illustrate it a little, I’d like to share a story with you.

In 1984, my friend Mark and I pulled up to Traci Miller’s house. She and her friend and next-door neighbor Jackie were already waiting outside. We were all going to the movies, which we did fairly often, and since Mark was the only one with a car at the time, he always drove. As the girls got into the back seat of Mark’s Mustang, Miller shoved a cassette tape towards us between the front seats and said something like, “You have to play this! You guys are going to love it!” She asked whether we had ever heard of Kate Bush. The cassette was The Kick Inside, Kate’s first record and I had never heard anything quite like it. But by the time we got to the theater, I was a fan and have been ever since.

Despite having been a fan for nearly 40 years, I know almost nothing about her. Kate’s personal life is largely a mystery and really always has been. She’s done very few interviews and over the course of 45 years and 9 studio albums, she’s only toured twice. The first was a 10-show UK tour in 1979 called The Tour of Life, which Melody Maker magazine called “the most magnificent spectacle ever encountered in the world of rock.” But then—nothing. She released 7 more albums but didn’t tour again until 2014 when she sold out 22 consecutive dates at the Hammersmith Apollo in just 15 minutes. Remember, she hadn’t played a live show for 35 years and still her fans flocked to buy tickets. In fact, 7 additional shows were added to the initial 15 because demand for tickets was so high. And of course her fans listened to other things and went to other shows in her absence, but when she decided to show up for them and perform live, they were there for her, despite the fact that she hadn’t put out a new record since 2011.

So what does Kate Bush have to do with any of this? I think part of it is that she wasn’t out there on social media telling us about every aspect of her life. Instead, she was living her life and making the work if and when she had something to say. I admire that immensely and I’ve come around to something similar for myself. And to be clear, I think I’ve known this intellectually for a long time. The hardest part has been trying to reconcile it and get my head around being okay with not simply feeding the machine but instead just focusing on living my life and making new work when the work needs to be made. When it’s done I’ll put it out, but then I have to be able to let it go to make room for the next things to start to develop and grow. And I’ve decided that it really is okay for me to not feel guilty about not constantly manufacturing stuff to post just because I feel like I’m missing out or I feel like I’m leaving an audience on the table because they are going to find somebody else. Of course they will and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, but when I have something to share, hopefully they’ll be back. And if they don’t come back, that’s okay too.

If I’ve learned anything about making art, it’s that you can’t control what an audience will or won’t like. They’re going to make up their own minds, regardless of how good I think the work is. And here’s the thing—even if I put up something on Instagram that I think is the best thing I’ve ever done, with my current social media footprint and the way the algorithm works, that post only actually gets seen by a handful of people. Certainly not enough to make an impact—and the odds of anything I post going viral are so small they may as well be zero. So if that’s the case, why expend all of that additional creative energy on trying to second guess what an audience will or won’t like—not to mention the relentless promotion expected by the algorithm?

If I am thinking about self-promotion, I’m not thinking about creating. You’re either in CEO mode or “worker bee” mode. You’re either writing or editing, but not both. So if I’m spending a ton of time trying to figure out how to get or keep an audience, I’m not thinking about making. And since making is where I get the most joy, spending too much time on the self-promotion side effectively steals the potential joy I get from making. To put it in perspective, how much new work have I actually made in the past 3, 4, even 6 months? Not much, because I’ve been paralyzed by worrying about how to put it out. What should it look like? Where should it live? What should I say about it? How should I package it? Instead, I could just put it up and if somebody finds it, great. If not, that’s great too because I’m already onto making the next thing. Right now, nobody gets it. And it’s not intentional. I’m not intentionally withholding my work—I just can’t seem to decide on the right way to put it out because there are 10,000 options running on repeat through my brain. Being paralyzed by all of this stuff means nobody wins, least of all me.

I think the time has come to stop worrying about what I should do and instead focus on what I could do. Could is about possibility, whereas should feels more like an obligation. I think I trust this approach way more than simply manufacturing mediocre content to post multiple times a day just so I can try to stay ahead of the algorithm. For me, I think it’s better to just make the work I want to make and come up with a simple and repeatable way to make it available and let the rest of it sort itself out.

Thanks so much for reading.

Jeffery Saddoris

QUESTIONS
How—and when—in your process do you consider what an audience might want or how they might react?

Hit reply, leave a comment, or email me at talkback@jefferysaddoris.com.

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