“Sometimes I paint fakes,” Pablo Picasso once said, though probably the story is apocryphal. In a public gathering, where one of his paintings was on display, he’d denounced it as a fake and left. A protege of his, who had watched Picasso paint the piece, ran after him, asking why he’d said it was fake, when he had, in fact, painted it. Picasso is reported to have shrugged, uttered the line, and walked on.
We all ‘fake it’ sometimes - let others believe we can do something or are skilled in some way. Actors ‘phone it in’ for a performance; teachers do an old lesson not really suited to their present class; parents do what their parents did instead of what they feel they should. At times, others get an impression of us or our abilities and we’re not quite sure how it happened, but we don’t correct them - and, then, when the times comes to step up, we face the task or the situation with apprehension -- sometimes delighting ourselves in making it through, sometimes embarrassing ourselves, sometimes surprising ourselves that, in spite of the fact that we thought we were faking it, we actually were capable of….whatever. And, sometimes, we simply choose not to do our best, because it’s easier to be middling, and we’re tired.
Sometimes we paint fakes.
In the face of that, though, is one thought to consider. Those viewing the painting Picasso thought of as ‘a fake’ did not recoil from that work. They admired it, lauded it, were moved by it. It did what the work of an artist is supposed to do - it engaged them. Every artist, writer, musician - every creative soul - if they have been at it for any length of time - has had the experience of creating something that they think of as a “little” thing - an exercise, a lark - and then been surprised when others are moved by it.
In a recent conversation with my sister, she told me how a friend of hers named Eagle Man had wanted her write a section on Islam for his book. She had been trying to ‘get out of it’ and he said to her: ‘Do you want to pass into the spirit world not having said what you have to say?”
I have been thinking about this a great deal ever since. Knowing what you have to say is one problem, but, beyond that, is the question of saying it. Saying it right, at the right time, in the right way, in the right format, with the right metaphors, in the right venue...etc. The number of things that can go wrong in just saying something are legion. For some people, the thought paralyzes them, or sends them off to ‘paint fakes’ -- to do something that is, in their minds, lesser. And what occurs to me is that is entirely the right thing to do at some times, and the wrong thing to spend one iota of energy worrying about.
I am not saying - never, ever would I say - that you should settle for doing middling work. We should always be brave, write about what hurts, sink our teeth into our stories, as LeGuin says, ‘until the blood runs.’ But, sometimes, the story or the work that occurs to you, that dominates your mind, may not feel like the right one for what you have to say. But it won’t leave you alone so you write it, feeling all the while as though you should be doing something better. For a writer serious enough to have thought about and identified what it is they have to say, what I can tell you is this - what you have to say is in there, whether you recognize it or not.
Look at the work of a favorite writer, or artist, or musician - you will see themes within their work that carry across everything you read, or look at, or listen to. One writer always ends up showing the plight of families trying to understand each other; a musician writes lyrics over and over that deal with the loss of innocence; a painter is taken with the subject of liberation. These themes, these messages, these expressions of what these artists have to say come through no matter where they were in the process, or how well they believed they were doing it.
It will be there.
That is, if you have something to say. Just writing - just for fun - is perfectly acceptable. Like the trained dancer who, in the solitude of her own home, dances for sheer joy, the writer sometimes needs to just let go and sweep words from the soul onto the page. But when we bring our writing to others - to readers - they expect something. That ‘something’ should be the thought, the message, the sheer purpose that drives you in your writing. Which means that knowing what that is, identifying it, committing to it, is the one most serious duty of the writer. Know it. Define it. Hold it close, always. That is task number one. Then, as you learn to listen to the voice of the story in your head, to follow the whisper of a character in your mind, that message from your heart will come out with the words.
Find what that is for you - and never let it go. Then, from time to time, you can, without guilt, write to ‘paint a fake’ -- dancing in the privacy of your home.
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