Instead of turning inward, consider people’s coolness to your idea and their criticisms as a kind of mirror that they are holding up to you.

Your ego cannot protect you — the mirror does not lie. You use it to correct your appearance and avoid ridicule.

The opinions of other people serve a similar function. You view your work inside your mind, encrusted with all kinds of desires and fears. Through their criticisms you can get closer to this objective version and gradually improve what you do.

When your work does not communicate with others, consider it your own fault. You did not make your ideas clear enough, you failed to connect with your audience emotionally. This will spare you any bitterness or anger that might come from people’s critiques. You are simply perfecting your work through the social mirror.

If your art is true to you and also fills a deep seated need in another… exchanging it for money is not selling out

Well put, Janice.

Hashim, I like to think of this way: Either an artist or entrepreneur satisfies existing desire on purpose, or on accident. Understanding and connecting with your audience on a deeper level takes the “accident” out of your art. I’m not saying you ask people specifically what they want, but you have to understand what they want at a fundamental level of desire.

No desire = failure.

I think trying to create things accidentally in order to keep some sense of artistic purity is misguided. Operating from a standpoint of ignorance seems silly and counterproductive.

Also, as we can see by some of unnamed rappers referenced in this post, there could be some condescension working here. Like rappers who make it big and forget about the “little” people who got them there, too often struggling artists see others as beneath them.