Vivek Shraya’s new show How to Fail as a Popstar pays homage to the artist’s journey and the power of failure. And I’m here for all of it — the show and a reframing of the big F.
The article about Shraya’s career was a timely interruption to my morning doom scroll. By 8am I was already deflated. I knew what I was doing when I left the challenging but relatively safe routine of the highschool classroom. I was not naive when I traded union security for the 10000 Nos of art making. And most days I’m really good with my decision. 20 years in the classroom prepared me well for the writerly world’s big needs and limited resources.
But the scarcity mindset that permeates both education and the arts remains a challenge to overcome.
Today the looming threat of failure made me tired before the day had even begun because I woke up to yet another NO email. The kind that reads like this:
Great idea, thanks for all of the work you’ve poured into it, but NO. We really admire the heart of this project and see value in its mission but still…NO.
NO is scarcity in two letters. It is a strange untamable animal of a word. The ultimate negative according to one dictionary definition. And as many times as I tell myself that each “no” will take me closer to a “yes,” and each failure is really an iterative step closer to success, I still find myself bogged down under the weight of it.
The strength training required to navigate big F feelings requires tools. Sometimes I have the mental energy to turn to philosophy which is truly “the story of ideas failing to account for the very questions that spawned them.” I encourage you to check out heavier lifts like Bradatan’s In Praise of Failure: Four Lessons in Humility (Harvard University Press).
His latest book distances itself from any form of redemptive, “rise-and-grind,” podcast-and-kale, self-help regimen. Instead, for our health, we are called to do what makes us uncomfortable: “take failure seriously.”
Another heavy lift, and perhaps more hopeful, is Gaukroger’s The Failures of Philosophy: A Historical Essay (Princeton University Press) in which,
Gaukroger challenges us to think clearly, to confront what cannot be contained by the systems of meaning we cherish, to fail boldly, badly, and with hope that something new will emerge for a time before it, too, collapses under its own blindness and weight.
But sometimes it’s quicker to wade into the not-terribly-rigorous waters of internet self-help writing. And when I did Google didn’t totally fail me! In fact I stumbled upon two little nuggets of something like wisdom.
One was the prompt to ask myself “What did you fail at today?” Supposedly this question is a helpful way you can reframe the traditional failure-success dichotomy…I’m pondering it. (If this has ever worked for you please share!).
The other prompt is to claim the “No” as something other than failure. To call it redirection. Had Shraya’s popstar dreams come true they would have taken her down a very different life path. In fact traveling that road probably would have meant the rest of us missing out on some great writing!
If Shraya can frame her artistic redirection through the lens of failure — of NO — and Bradatan insists that taking failure seriously will actually save my life, it seems I am in good artistic and philosophical company to at least try and follow their leads.
If you’re looking for some writerly voices to add to your podcast mix this week, check out our recent interview with author
here. We work to reframe trauma through the lens of pop culture. You can stay in the loop about all things Reframeables via our substack .
Very thoughtful.
Hey Nat, I love this reflection and I can really visualize the strain of opening that NO email can have on your day. I know the perseverance needed to stay creative is huge and I wanna give you a huge high five! I know you are loving this new life you have built for yourself and while the NOs can be crushing, I will never forget the way your voice sounded in the podcast before you made the move to leave your Union job and pension. You are the one who gave you the Yes to be bold and follow this path out into your art. All these Nos take nothing away from your Yes, its only that they can't join you yet in getting your art to their market. To me the beauty of where you are is that you are deciding what you say Yes to and what you say No to and that will certainly pay off both in the short term and the long term... with every project you create and bring to the market you will be amazing! You are amazing!!!!!!!!!!