People will miss it if you don't put it out there. "Art with Intent"

You’ve probably heard stories about famous composers who burned their manuscripts, or held back on presenting and publishing music they didn’t think was good enough.

Were they being too irrationally hard on themselves, or did they write something they knew was not up to their standard? That’s another story.

This story is a reminder that the work you are doing is important, and that people will miss it if you don’t put it out there.

Here’s Seth Godin’s version of this story.

“Art with Intent”

Art (movies, plays, fiction, paintings, poetry…) exists to create a change. Often, that’s a change in the viewer, and sometimes, powerful art changes the culture.

Art with no intent can entertain us, and it can also reinforce stereotypes and simply help what is in our world persist.

Art with selfish intent exists to manipulate the viewer to serve the needs of the artist. It doesn’t often spread, but when it does, it can have a corrosive effect on the world around us.

But art with generous intent is different. It might not address an issue the way you would (in fact, that’s precisely why we need it) and it creates tension as it helps us look at things in a new way.

The plays of Sarah Jones, or a book by Sinclair Lewis or music by Charles Wilson or a movie by Amy Koppelman exist to make us think hard. To think about what we’ve taken for granted and to think about what might be different if we cared enough.

I’m not sure it even matters what the artist thought they wanted when they sat down to create the work. The art itself seems to want something, to make a change in the world. And the ability to create art like that belongs to each of us. (Seth Godin — https://seths.blog/)

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People will miss your art if you don’t put it out there.

We don’t want to miss out.

Seth Godin