By Kevin Lee Associate Editor

Four little letters; one short syllable.

It’s an awfully meager representation for a concept and feeling that touches us all. It guides our hearts and hands, fills us with mixed emotions and drives us to some of the most ambitious of feats.

And its insidious nature is one of the most crippling things known to our species.

“Fear” is a poor companion and a terrible master. It robs. It cripples. It can soak the verve from our lives and quickly build a prison within us.

Recently, I sat in conversation with a young musician. He explained to me why he had put his instrument aside, why he never gigged and never practiced. He went through the circuit of rationalization and finally arrived at the crux of the matter. His playing wasn’t “perfect” enough to suit his desires.

He didn’t say he wasn’t good enough. He didn’t say he couldn’t measure up to the musicians we watched perform on a weekly basis. He was certainly accomplished enough while in college, while being trained and rewarded and applauded for his skill.

However, beneath his recent litany of excuses lurked the essence: fear. Fear he wouldn’t match his own expectations. Fear he would never be able to say exactly what he meant and heard inside.

So, instead what he gets is no chance to ever say those things or share a portion of his humanity with others. If he at least tried to express it, he would at least have the hope of getting there someday. Without the attempt, it’s a guarantee he’ll never reach that point.

In sharp contrast, another horn player I know left his hometown after college to work on a cruise line. The job forced him to play for many hours a day and to concentrate on little else other than music. He followed his period of high seas “woodshedding” with a stay in New York City. While there, he developed working relationships with some of the heavyweights of his genre.

And the most important thing he learned from his travels? He quickly admits it was how to lose the fear of failure. Even now, he shakes his head at how hard it is to teach his students there is “nothing to fear from failure.”

The shortcoming isn’t necessarily in not hitting the note or saying exactly what you wanted.

The actual failure is in not making the attempt.

Years past, I heard another young person tell someone she “wanted to be writer.” At the time, she was out of college and only working part-time as her family had secured both her living arrangements and a new computer. Still, she had said “wanted to be a writer.” “‘Wanted’ to be a writer.”

My first thought: So then write. What’s stopping you? A writer writes.

Creative people can no more stop the urge to create than most others can stop the impulse to breathe. It will manifest itself in some way, through some type of outlet. It’s the reason why so many artists of one stripe or another work in different mediums. It’s why cellists will often paint and write on the side.

So then what was stopping the erstwhile author? Was is it lack of true compulsion, of artistic drive? Was it fear of failure, of not measuring up to someone else’s standard or her own?

As artists, this reluctant pair, paralyzed by fear, will have to come to grips with the realization that ultimately we create for our own satisfaction, it’s our release and outlet.

But the typical artist still longs to make a connection with another person, to have at least one person tell you what you did mattered to them, that it elicited something inside. That’s a natural urge.

What about when you execute to your satisfaction, when you’re able to play exactly what you meant, when the performance is dead-on perfect or the words just flow the right way and still no one appreciates it?

In those moments, one must find resolve in their self-respect as an artist making a journey toward greater discovery. But above all, it doesn’t mean that you stop creating.

It means you learn the lesson that presents itself and use it as a crucible.

It means you chart your course and embrace strengths and flaws alike.

It means you’re no more capable of failure than anyone else and no less capable of inspiration.

It means you’re woefully and gloriously human, the most essential component of any artist.

Kevin Lee is Lagniappe associate editor. Contact him at klee@lagniappemobile.com.

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