Feedback.

I can't decide whether it's a good thing or bad thing. I know it's always good to hear critiques and opinions on what you create because you never know what will come out of it--both good and bad, critical and enlightening.

But I think sometimes I rely on it too much. I can't be totally satisfied with some things I make until I've heard what people think. I'll always be unsure of it. I either need reassurance that it is great or thoughts on how I can make it better.

At the same time, in certain instances, I believe in unobstructed, raw work--whatever just happens to come out of the creator. Of course an artist can never be detached from his or her surrounding; an artist can never be completely isolated. An artist only exists and IS because of the surroundings, because of what has created him or her.

See? I always go back and forth. In one instance I should have confidence in my work. But in another, I want--no need--to hear what people think. I never want to be caught in a position of being stuck in my own world of thinking I'm always amazing without question because, well I've known people like that and I can't stand it. But I also hate self deprecation, the tortured artist; it's annoying as tits.

I'm getting nowhere with this.

Stop.

Reevaluate.

I've never ever in my life thought in the context of polar opposites, so I ask myself, why am I doing it now? I always take a little of both, mesh the extremes in one colossal mixing bowl.

It isn't a matter of depending on opinions or shutting out opinions.

It's a matter of writing down, drawing, or putting together whatever it is that comes my way, letting the people and the public see it as they may, receive what they think and continue making, improving, changing on your own terms of thought, regardless of whether or not that thought is entirely your own or modified by what you have heard. A balance of being in your internal world but connected and open to the external world.

It's one of my favorite visuals of life: a never ending continuum of one existence within another. Like in Horton Hears a Who where Horton carries around the entirety of Whoville in a little spec and its the connection between the two (the mayor whom everyone thinks has gone mad, and the giant elephant carrying the town around on his trunk) that keeps both worlds going, keeps them both curious, interested, and able to see themselves in the presence of something else.

TANGENT: This is also a visual that reminds me of one of my favorite Eddie Izzard bits. It's on mad cow disease. "We found they went mad. Because they were fed cows! They're supposed to eat grass. Yeah remember that? Cow eat grass? But they were fed cows. One cow was fed to another cow and that cow was fed to another cow, that cow was fed to another cow, and just like the Russian doll thing. Instead of a herd of cows, you had ONE HUGE ZEPPELIN COW... WHO WAS MAAD! And then that farmer filled that cow with helium and took it to market on a string....just to show off." Haha.....gets me every damn time.

You can only keep your sanity by letting both exist and finding your own healthy and successful balance between the two. And it's not to say that there aren't people who have been successful and renowned geniuses of math, science, art, literature, etc. by choosing to do completely what they think and shut out the external opinions, or the other way around. I just think getting anywhere in those extremes is very rare these days.

Now, I think I'm going to watch clips of Horton Hears a Who on youtube.