You Are NOT Better or Worse, You Are UNIQUE!
…and therefore you have no competition.
The story:
Today, while I was traversing a wide, uninhabited hillside full of grass, blossoming flowers and insects, I saw something unusual in front of me, which first caught my attention and finally my physical body, which trembled with excitement. In the distance in front of me, two painting easels stood next to each other with an attached canvas, and all kinds of colours were arranged or rather scattered under them.
Before I could get close to the distance from which I could observe the content of one or the other canvas, or at least any detail, the breathless authors (I judge this by their reactions, but also by their relationship to these works ) ran up to the canvases and continued to work further. I will not deal with where they were or what made them abandon their unfinished paintings at the same time, that is their business after all. Something completely different caught my attention anyway.
As I patiently walked up to these two gentlemen, and I dare say good friends, I noticed that they were painting this very side (I'm not surprised at them) with a wide range of mountains in the background. We greeted each other respectfully (each in his own way; I used a simple "good afternoon," the painters greeted with "hi there" and "yo") and then everyone minds their own business. I sat down a few steps behind them and continued to watch them at work. Painters forgot their physical body after a while, as well as the surrounding world (including me) and after all dedicated themselves to their works.
I, as an impartial observer of nature in front of me, but also of its dual representation on the painters' canvases, was discovering with my own eyes something that I had not seen anywhere before. The image of nature (a real physical object) that I was looking at from behind the representative paintings was diametrically different from those that stood out on the painters' canvases. And not only that! Even the paintings that stood right next to each other were different: while one glowed with yellow, white, and pale blue, the other stuck to grey, black, and other sombre colours. Well, it wasn't just about colours. The first one painted a big tree in the middle of the canvas (which wasn't really like that, I barely noticed it somewhere in the back), while in the second painting I still had to look at the sprawling mountain range, which brought all the grey and black on the canvas.
Which of the paintings was truer? More real? And please don't get me wrong. It was not about the quality of the techniques or the level of education of these artists. None of that was as important in this case as what painters were looking at and in what way (with what dialogue) they expressed it.
I will develop this story into other areas of art as well, so that there is no mistake that this is an isolated phenomenon that may not concern you. I could have easily said that there were two poets sitting on the meadow in front of me, arguing about the words and metaphors that the view of the surrounding nature evoked in them (which, after all, painters also indirectly did with their paintings). I could tell a story of two musicians who, based on my observation, would play one slow andante and the other a spontaneous presto. After all, who besides themselves will determine what they looked at, what they discovered, why they expressed themselves in this way?
It may not even be related to that particular situation, but rather to experience, to discovering and imitating things and phenomena from their earlier life. All of this is related to the creator's individuality, which is partly created, but partly assigned to him (subconsciously) by the life he lives, the things and phenomena he notices, puts into context, and which resonate in him.
Yes, the way a person looks at things and phenomena around him is reflected in the way he expresses himself, what he notices, what he connects or imagines. By perceiving details, more and more complex and comprehensive picture schemes are created, which build the artist's integrity, his individual and unmistakable language and the way of expressing the art created through him.
Let's take it even further. If you've ever taken a yoga class, you've probably come across the command to "open your chest." Yes, such an instruction is indeed unambiguous: everyone is most likely to push their chest forward and shoulders back. But what if the command came instead: "Lie down like a baby"? Of course, there would be a few seasoned yoga scholars who would drop to their knees in a moment, arms outstretched in front of them and their foreheads resting on the ground. This is what the child's pose (balasana) looks like. However, that was not the point of this exercise, and the scholars would therefore fail in it.
It was about lying down like a child. That is, based on our experiences and knowledge, to imitate how our inner child lies down and thereby uncovers a fragment of our own (creative) individuality. Isn't everyone at least a little different from us? Doesn't everyone paint their own landscape? Doesn't he compose his own poem? Doesn't he play the universal symphony at his own pace?
If we were to go more abstract—how would we express, for example, happiness? Anxiety? Fear? Freedom? Would any of these emotions or thoughts have a related expression? And, please, let's not limit ourselves to physical movement! Do we need to use voice? Let's use it. Where specifically in the body do we feel the given feeling most intensely? Each emotion can mean something different to each person. He can express it differently. When someone is afraid, they can withdraw into themselves, sit in a corner, but they can also close their eyes and breathe deeply or be aggressive. There are countless responses and none of them are correct.
Such work with the use of our own inner energy will significantly help us in the search for individuality, our own voice. Stanislavsky in the book An Actor Prepares worked in this connection with two "directions" of art: art of representation and art of experiencing. While in the first case a person remained trapped in the mind, in abstraction, in his imagination, in the second case he really experienced, expressed and recorded the given reality. It is one thing to imagine freedom and try to define it, and something else to actually experience it, capture it, apply it in the artistic process according to one's own experiences.
The creator's individuality and specialness is reflected precisely in that experience. Without it, painters would create the same picture, poets would write the same poems, musicians would play exactly the same way. Why do dreams appear real in sleep when we only imagine them and subconsciously (rarely even consciously) create them in our minds based on our experiences and discoveries? Because we truly experience them—at that given moment they are for us the only reality that we can perceive, feel and see. We surrender to the infinity of this present moment (as in creation), wherever and however it occurs.