NO ONE HAS TO LIKE YOU.
If you are offended by this, then this newsletter isn’t for you.
This idea is not for you. This concept is not for you.
And perhaps, even, a creative life is not for you.
Maybe even being an artist, in general, is not for you.
Because, if you’re offended by this statement, It means you have no idea how to create things for yourself, and live with bodies of work that are crafted by your hand, for no other purpose than to serve expression.
You have no idea what it feels like to burn on the inside so deeply that you have no choice but to expel those sensations, regardless of what anyone thinks.
What those kinds of expression turn out to be, is—thankfully—up to you.
As the creator, the artist, the director, you are responsible for the channeling and depiction of those emotions that live within you. Artists get the “itch.” It’s a sensation that literally will not leave you the fuck alone until you do something with it. Do something about it. It’s relentless, ruthless, and has branches for teeth. I can speak from experience. Those fuckers are like witch’s nails.
For some, this is a freeing realization, and they accept it with open arms.
Some, who are insecure, and likely lost in the overthinking that comes with wanting to be liked, to be accepted, and to be celebrated without the necessary, and always-earned, ugly sides of those things—criticism, tomato-throwing, opinions that, yes, scrape your soft skin into bloody sandpaper— are destined to never make anything worth observing.
No one’s harsh enough about this, because people are afraid of hurting feelings.
I’m not afraid of hurting your feelings. My goal is to drill this into your skull and demand you to think for yourself. Do you hate me for this? Good. If you want to fight, it means you have something in you. Something that needs to be stoked. If you’re indifferent, good. You don’t care. You’ve already decided how your story will go, and you would rather I fuck off. I commend that. If you love what you’re reading and feel validated, great. Every person reading this is different, and every single person is allowed to walk away with completely different takes, points of view, and to hate me. To like me. To feel nothing. To feel whatever.
If you’re trying to be liked through your art, you need to reconsider where you’re standing.
The point of making art is not to please anyone, but to unleash the parts of you that have desperately tried to grow teeth since their inception inside your soul. Their eggs incubate while you ignore them and stoke the flames of other projects that you don’t give two shits about. Abandon the desires to be liked by people through your art and instead learn to sprout wings that make you fly high, above, and far away into the sky of where YOUR SOUL AND HEART AND MIND truly yearn to be.
No one has to like you.
Trying to be liked makes you unlikable.
Trying to be liked makes you uninteresting.
Simply creating for yourself makes unbelievable art. It forces people to pay attention. It forces YOU to pay attention. But instead, you ignore those impulses because the world is feeding these insipid little demons that would rather trade their identities and self-belief and entire fucking dignity for a few seconds of attention. Or, maybe you won’t make that choice… but your neighbors, and their neighbors, and all the neighbors in-between, have. And they will. And you have to look inward and away from the noise if you truly give a damn.
Even if no one looks. Even if no one pays attention to you. You have to learn be comfortable with what you’re making. Most people will tell you that you should be glad for publicity. This is true. Making money from your art requires attention. I won’t deny that. I won’t reject that. However, the difference any artist worth their future legacy needs to adopt is this:
You should never stop making art because no one pays attention. You need to make art so that you force yourself to pay attention, even when no one else will. Eventually, what makes you worth talking about—if you’re any good—will fall onto you. They will notice, because you dared to be the FIRST TO NOTICE.
This is intimate. This is confronting. This is devastating. And all the other things that people like to wax poetic about, but I’m serious. Hope you can feel how serious and frustrated I am typing these out, because while I do not care at all if you like me, I am begging you to think twice about you being disappointed someone didn’t read your fucking Substack or like your fucking Instagram post or read your fucking book.
GIVE THE DAMNEST DAMN ABOUT YOUR ART SO THAT THOSE DAMNEST DAMNS TRANSLATE INTO AN UNDENIABLY “YOU” BODY OF WORK PEOPLE WILL LOVE, HATE, AND REMEMBER—NO MATTER WHO PAYS ATTENTION TO YOU RIGHT NOW.
And even then… you may never be discovered.
But that is the risk we take. As artists, our purpose is to create because we need to. Not for others, but for ourselves. Otherwise, we die a toothless death.
You are an ARTIST, not a performer.
You love your art.
Start acting like it.
— Taylor Barnes.