What Does it Mean to be Good at Something?
FEBRUARY 2022 ● JOURNAL
Well, it's winter, and it's blue. And gray. If you like gray, I don't know what to tell you other than I'm sorry. What kind of joker is charmed by the color gray? What's that, babe? Why am I grinning ear to ear? It's gray outside! Let's go enjoy it while it lasts!! But blue, in most cases, would strike a fellow as a shade that suggests joy and buoyancy. That's not the blue I'm reporting on. I'm talking about the blue you can feel- chilling your bones and biting your skin. The blue that lacks its signature vibrance. The blue that oversteps its boundaries and imposes itself on other wavelengths of radiation that make up the color spectrum. It's not a summer blue that compliments the environment, but rather a blue that hides within the shadows and joins forces with gray, dominating the palette of everything it reaches. This ain't no Electric Light Orchestra blue. And rotten clusters of muddy browns have monopolized the fields and streets; green has gone out of business. Everything is a goddamn eyesore. An alien could come visit, say South America, and then, being the curious little space explorer he is, navigate his way on up here to Colorado and find himself befuddled. Perturbed. He may think to himself, "What in the universe happened here? Fuck this! This place is barren, and the air hurts my face!" He'd ask his interstellar travel agency for a refund. I'm with you, Mr. Alien, I'm with you. I'm sure, by the way, that an alien's vacation to a different planet is not unlike a vacation to another country for us humans. I'd be a little upset if I wasted my paid time off on a destination where only half of the area is attractive. And you may be thinking I'm taking the mountains here for granted. You know, those walloping walls of rocks and crust and minerals that took millions of years to naturally, almost magically, form and ascend up toward the edge of space, with no thanks to human aid? The centerpiece of the canvas? No, I'm not. I've been hundreds of times. I get it. The jazz of the mountains gets muted in the winter, too- at least in my opinion. That's not to say I don't appreciate what's around me, though. I do feel guilty that I carry a penchant for ragging on winter from time to time. I just miss the subtle commotion of life. The abundance of flora and wildlife. I mean, even most animals seem to have learned something the human species hasn't. Birds migrate, right? I notice it driving to and from work and participating in my humdrum routine of errands here and there- there are far fewer animals out and about. Well, I'm an animal, no? Why am I out?
It's strange- I feel this way about things, hmm, I'd say roughly once a year. It brings me down. My spirit gets subdued, affecting my creativity. A fresh snowfall is like a blanket for the ground. It's time for bed. The ground sleeps, and the palpable drowsiness floods my spirit with a dreaded lassitude. Sometimes I mistake it for burnout or depression. Cold wind whistles and clashes against my face as if to assert itself and announce its presence. My hat soared right off my head just this morning and tumbled into a mound of slush. I'm craving golden hues of attractive warmth. I desperately want to be surrounded by shadows filled with warm tones, void of blues commingling with grays. Save those for the highlights. And green. God, I want to be surrounded by green. All matter is made up of atoms and molecules that are constantly in motion. Temperature is essentially a measurement of the kinetic energy of these particles. For example, if it's cold, the particles are moving more slowly. Maybe that's why my creativity flounders during the winter- it's just not as active. The artistic visions don't flow like they do in the summer. And wait a second, y'all remember when not too long ago I asserted I'd embrace the winter and make the most of it? Use it as a means to cultivate personal growth? Yeah, I say a lot of things, I suppose. And it's well within my right to change my mind as I please, dammit. I can only rely on shooting neon signs and what have you to fill the void for so long. Hell, I've scoped out and taken photographs of nearly every neon sign around this city.
I'm moving.
In a couple months, I'll be living in Southern California. Those birds are on to something, man. And I'm no fool- I see their genius.
So all of this grumbling about the winter really just boils down to one thing: I feel like I'm in a creative rut. My capacity for imagination feels hollow. And as of late, this has made me speculate on my abilities when it comes to snapping photos. Am I a good photographer? Are you, the readers, enjoying all of the images I've chosen to accompany this text? What does it even mean to be good at something, though? Now throw social media into the mix. Let's take Instagram, for example. Ya take a picture, conjure up some sort of caption to accompany it, and publish it for people all around the world to view. The photos accumulate likes, comments, saves, shares, and eventually, you begin to build a following. Over the past few months, I have received so many messages inquiring about a noticeable decline in likes on this app. People will ask if it's something I've noticed as well. So many of my conversations have touched on this. Engagement has been dropping across the board. Now, I have one opinion on this to start: Instagram is a photo-based app. TikTok is a video-based app. But then, Instagram decided that they wanted to attract a younger audience and appeal to those who like videos. So they implemented "reels." They essentially added a tool within their app to mimic TikTok's function. And their algorithm essentially rewards those who create reels. Those who don't participate get buried by the algorithm and are less likely to pop up on users' feeds, resulting in less engagement on your photos. So to summarize, the app made for photo sharing decided it wanted to be a video app. I swear to fucking God, if I have to watch one more reel of someone twisting knobs on their film camera or changing a lens to the same, tired background music, I'm going to lose it. I'll cash in my marbles. How many times do I need to see a video showing the view through a camera's viewfinder of the photo the person is about to take. Show me the fucking picture instead! Pictures are…pictures. Not videos. Why combine tens of images into a 30-second video where you can hardly appreciate the photographs? Well, I'll tell you why: people are playing the game. They're giving in. They don't want to get buried by the algorithm. And, unfortunately, it's understandable. I may even dabble with it myself- we'll see. It feels bad to see your likes drop, yanno? You start to wonder if your content is no longer attractive. If your skills have dropped off. If people are tired of your style.
Okay, so obviously, to be good at something, you need to at least have a basic understanding of whatever it is you're doing. And some experience, among other things. Let's get that out of the way before we continue. Now, if you get paid to do something, does that make you good at doing that thing? Nah, I know plenty of morons who get paid to do things they're not good at. I'm sure you do as well. See, I'll bet ya just thought of five folks that fit the bill in your head already. So that can't be it. Because you receive accolades, does that make you good at whatever it is you're doing? I suppose that would be a more likely indicator that someone is, in fact, good at something. But it ignores several factors. You've got politics and just so many little variables to factor in and consider. What about all the people who weren't in the right place at the right time or didn't have the same connections as those successful folks who have received their accolades and trophies? Unless you're an oblivious ignoramus, you have to admit that there are thousands, perhaps millions, of people who could receive the same accolades as those who have if given the same set of tools to learn and succeed. Some people are also just born into unfortunate circumstances that are hard to climb out of. So maybe that's not a good measurement of whether or not someone's good at something either. Alright, what about simply being told you're good? What about receiving validation from your peers? That also sounds plausible. But, especially with art, opinions are just subjective beliefs. I could posit that someone's photography is otherworldly, but you may judge that individual's work differently. You might think it's garbage. So that theory seems like a bit of a fallacy. So how in the hell can we tell if someone is good at something? How do you know if you're good at whatever it is you're doing? Theoretically, suppose you defined a set of "rules" or "standards" for being objectively good at something, maybe based on technical skills or the ability to pass specific tests. In that case, you could decide if someone is good at that thing. But now, we're bending the question and straying from the discussion. And that's another paradox. Wouldn't those rules and standards for being objectively good have come from subjective reasoning? Those rules and standards also don't allow for growth, new developments, or the unexpected. And if they do, and don't remain strictly defined, then an objective approach in measuring talent is thus invalidated as well. Right?
There's this song I've loved for years now. One of my favorite portions of the lyrics, some that have resonated with me throughout the years, read as follows:
I just wanna be good at somethin' I like
Somethin' I might wake up for
'Cause I've been sleepin' so long
I'm up on a stage or minimum wage
Scream myself hoarse
After some good ol' thinkin' and reflection, it's clear, at least to me, that there's no real answer. What really matters is if whatever you're doing brings you joy, fulfillment, confidence, and meaning. One thing's for damn sure, though- if you ain't passionate about your undertaking, you ain't gonna be truly good at it. If it comes naturally to you, then that's great. But are you willing to learn, step outside of your comfort zone and try new things? Can you introduce something new to the sphere? Can you reshape the way people see something? Can you inspire others? Can you make people genuinely feel something- especially with art? Are you willing to put in the time that others aren't to better your capabilities? I think I've said this before- film gives me something to wake up for. It brings me that joy, fulfillment, confidence, and meaning I just mentioned. For a long time, I did feel like I was sleeping in a sense. For a bit, things in my life felt aimless. Wake up, go to work, come home, fuck around, go to bed, and then rinse and repeat. I've been waking up. And when your primary source of income isn't your true passion, it can feel like you're working for minimum wage. Not in a monetary sense, but a spiritual one. You'll be caught metaphorically screaming in your head, repining out into an unresponsive void because all you want is to be good at something you like.
There's this one photo I created in early December last year. I was at a motel with some rad, old-fashioned neon sign that I just had to capture. Well, I had already photographed it before. So this time, I had a hankering to switch things up, not because I felt like I needed to, I was just genuinely enjoying myself. I moved about and crooked and slumped and twisted until I had my body in the perfect position to get what was in my mind, the perfect composition. First, I took a single exposure of the sign. Slowly, I advanced the shutter lever on my RB67, leaving the film advance lever untouched. Double exposure time. I did my best to stay as still as possible so as not to disrupt the alignment of the composition in my first exposure. Holding my breath, like a sniper readying himself to pull the trigger, I delicately adjusted the shutter speed to allow for a longer exposure and steadily tilted my camera as the shutter remained open. This created a drag effect that came out FUCKING perfect. All handheld without the use of a special effects lens filter. Now I'm not gonna lie; I've tried that several times and have had results that simply did not work. But this one did. I proved to myself I could do it. I proved I could do something new for myself. And I felt good about what I had created when I received the developed film and scanned the negative. At that moment, I felt like I was good at photography. Forget the likes and all that noise. When I get out to California, I'm going to keep chasing this feeling because that's all that really matters. Your personal relationship to your art and self-expression should outweigh any other metric when it comes to determining whether or not you're good at something.
This article is featured in the thirteenth issue of the Y35 Mag. Check it out here.