What To Say When People Fail
Also the stories we believe, and pass along, about ourselves
Several years ago I was executive director of a nonprofit in Tucson that taught fine art classes to kids and adults of all ages: our youngest students were 8; our oldest was 91. When I would tell people in the community what I did for a living, it seemed as if half of them would respond with a story of how they were not creative at all—“my sister is the creative one,” “once an art teacher told me I was an awful painter,” “I can’t even draw a stick figure!”
Now some of these stories were relayed for comedic effect, which I appreciate. I’m a big fan of reframing our embarrassing moments because it’s empowering to see how they’re funny too. But underneath the self-deprecating exterior, lots of people have real convictions about their artistic nature, as if they’ve concluded creativity is encoded in one’s DNA and they got none. Of course, not everyone has the same artistic aptitude and opportunity. Some people possess more talent for drawing, singing, or sculpting. Some have more dexterity with their hands or can easily express a range of emotion. Some are exposed to the arts from a young age, shuffled to galleries or dragged to concerts. But even these individuals, if they want to develop their skills, must learn the fundamentals and practice, practice, practice.
I am no longer telling you anything you don’t know. I’ve also taken a detour to climb onto an old soapbox, so let me steer us back to my point, which is this: Not everyone wants to be an artist, and, fine. Not everyone wants to be an athlete or an academic or an interior decorator or baker. But loads of people have come to identify with the ill-formed opinions of teachers, parents, bosses, even yoga instructors (that one’s personal) who likely possess no real intention to cause harm, yet do, in fact, manage to signal their limiting beliefs in our potential. These snap-judgements become like stupid blisters on the heel of our existence.
And counteracting that is my obsession.
When I began to understand just how many people didn’t think of themselves as creative, I came up with a makeshift, street-level antidote. I organized a storytelling event, similar to The Moth, and invited a few artists to share the stage with me. I partnered with a professional storyteller to arm our volunteers with a working knowledge of narrative arcs, character, and conflict. Then we booked a room at the YWCA, rented a popcorn machine, bought Red Vines and Milk Duds and Raisinets, and went for it.
Stories can be a strategic way to make a point. It’s like showing your work in a math problem. What I hoped would happen is that our personal tales would deepen and expand our collective understanding of what it looks like to make stuff. I wanted to normalize the critical voices and set-backs and half-starts, the small wins and lonely times and unintended consequences because we all suffer them. Creating anything—a company, a brand, a work of art—requires navigating a familiar weather pattern, and it is turbulent.
Kerry Woodcock reminded me of this when I interviewed her the other week. I asked Kerry about an “a-ha” moment in which she understood the power of coaching, and she shared about the time when her father, who was also her athletic coach, sat beside her as she reconciled disqualifying from an important race: “It was such a simple but profound moment,” she said.
Kerry’s story echoed the one I told at our event that night.
When I was in the second grade, we bought a piano that sat next to the front window in the living room, and I enrolled in lessons from one of seemingly only two instructors in town. Even at age 7 or 8, the piano-playing kids understood—probably from the mouths of parents, reissued as our own form of playground currency—what it meant to have one teacher or the other.
One teacher was considered the best and charged like it. She had a grand piano in her house. She adhered to the Suzuki method of music education and expected students to practice at least an hour a day. (After all, piano playing requires discipline, focus, and technique.) If you took lessons from her, you might be terrified, but you would learn. You likely would go on to study music in college, probably with a scholarship.
The other teacher, Mrs. Bame, also performed in a Renaissance ensemble in which I think she played the recorder. She wore bulky brown hiking boots with red laces, conducted the children’s choir at the Methodist church, and was married to a middle-school band teacher who hosted Dungeons & Dragons game nights in their home. She had an upright piano in a dark studio off the kitchen, which was lined floor-to-ceiling with dusty shelves and cluttered with boxes of sheet music and music books.
Mrs. Bame was my teacher. I remember her bony fingers and how they looked so different from my own on the piano keys. I remember when she showed me how even a small hand could stretch to reach an octave. One time she steered me to her backyard, a giant cinder square with a fence, to demonstrate how the wind could play the strings of a harp.
Setting pedagogical differences aside, the local piano teachers would come together twice a year, book a music hall at the university and produce a student recital. I’d been playing piano for only a few months when the next one rolled around, and I was ready. I had a piece prepared. It was a one-line, one-note-at-a-time march from Pageants for Piano, and I memorized it by finger strokes, and I played it with rigor.
A few days before the recital, Mrs. Bame gathered her musicians for a lesson in the etiquette of performance. We rehearsed how to fold our hands in our laps before pouncing upon the keys, just long enough to take a few deep breaths. She told us not to panic if we made a mistake but instead to pause and keep going. Then we practiced how to bow—“look out at the audience, look down at your shoes, look back at the audience, and walk to your seat.” It was beautiful; so precise, so clear.
On the night of the recital, when it was my turn to play, I climbed the stage steps, sat on the squishy piano bench cushion, folded my hands in my lap, and realized I had a big problem. I couldn’t find middle C. The grand piano, which I’d practiced on a few days prior at rehearsal, now looked nothing like our upright Steinway at home—yet my song hinged on both thumbs resting together on this single note. I studied the keys for what felt like an eternity, and the more I calculated my options, the more every key seemed a viable answer to my multiple choice question. Finally, I took my best guess and performed my march with as much march-like gusto I could muster.
I probably don’t have to tell you that I guessed wrong. Maybe I placed my thumbs on B or D, who can say? I became painfully aware of this mistake a measure in, but because I’d memorized the key strokes as a pattern of movement, the best choice seemed to be to keep going—even if what I played didn’t sound like music at all. When I finished, I remember standing up to take my bow and meeting the audience’s incredulous stare. Their faces said, “What did you just do?” and my eyes said, “I am so sorry. I have no idea.” My cheeks flushed beet red. Then I looked down at my shoes, looked back out at the crowd, now impossibly large, probably filled with everyone I’d ever known or would ever meet, and they began to clap.
After the recital, students and parents milled about the concert hall, and Mrs. Bame came up to me, beaming. She hugged me with all of her tiny might and said, “I am so proud of you. You made a mistake, and you kept going!” And my fear melted away, or most of it did, and my embarrassment over the cacophony of notes I’d just spilled onto the stage receded, or almost did. Regardless, I did something right, and my teacher was proud, and that’s what I carried home like a bouquet of roses.
And I never forgot it.
Leap ahead to years later when I told this story on stage—I crafted my conclusion to be about the tenacity of the individual: A rough start doesn’t determine your potential, a mistake doesn’t need to ruin your night, etc., because that was what I wanted the audience to take away. But there are so many additional themes that ring true. When you bow, people will probably clap. The “best” education isn’t always the most expensive. The keys of upright and grand pianos look entirely different when you’re on a stage.
This, too—it’s not just kids, but also adults, who thrive with the support and encouragement of a Mrs. Bame or a Kerry’s dad. It’s a human thing to want skilled feedback, to have a champion in your corner because we are, all of us, co-writing our narratives. And if the motivation-centric mantra that “anything is possible” rings hollow to you (it often does to me too), at the very least I hope we can agree that our potential, artistic or otherwise, diminishes or expands in proportion to the stories we tell ourselves, so let’s look at them with fresh eyes: authentically, honestly, yes—and also with compassion.
Oh my gosh! I remember that storytelling event - it was amazing. I still think about it sometimes <3