Negative Space #011

Starting from zero.

Welcome to the first post of Negative Space for 2024.

January came and went and I hope everyone’s start to the new year went well. I was telling my wife, Maddi, that New Year’s is probably one of my favorite holidays to celebrate. I think it’s for the same reason as most people; a fresh start, a new beginning, a new year. Our problems haven’t gone away, but our hope has been replenished for those things where hope may have leaked. Or our inspiration has rekindled from the fresh oxygen slowly breathed in as the clock ticks towards midnight. Either way, New Year’s is a humbling experience because we involuntarily start back at zero. There are not many areas in our life where we voluntarily start back at zero.

But the artist’s life shows differently.

Meeting at Zero

A couple weeks ago, I was given the opportunity to attend a listening party for the American composer, conductor, and music director of the Louisville Orchestra, Teddy Abrams for his most recent Piano Concerto composition featured in “The American Project”. Teddy’s work was Grammy nominated for Best Classical Instrumental Solo, which was his first Grammy nomination. The music is absolutely phenomenal, carrying out themes through the whole piece that the listener hears within the first fifteen seconds. If you have 40ish minutes to spare, I encourage you to listen to this all in one setting. An editing or writing session or even a longer car ride would be perfect for listening to this piece. Although, the best would be sitting down and giving this piece your undivided attention.

Teddy was very generous to host the party at his home in the Nulu neighborhood of Louisville and welcomed us with conversation, drinks, and charcuterie boards. The music, of course, was outstanding. But the thing that stuck with me and that I’ve thought a lot about since was something that Teddy said after we got done listening to the piece. He started talking and got about halfway through when I realized I needed to record this. So I pulled out my phone and started recording the latter half of what he was saying, which still captured the idea of what he was speaking towards. This is what I got,

…and I think artists have that humility their entire lives. Because the next piece that I write will go back to zero whether you loved this, whether you liked it, whether you didn’t understand a note of it, the next time we’ll all start at zero and meet there again. That’s one of the great and humbling things that we do as human beings. We continually put ourselves through that, despite having far more pressing matters at hand, right? But we still seem to find that this art experience that we share together is important to us, no matter how bad things get in the world we’ve kept that as a core part of humanity. And this little gathering here is another act of that same ritual.

— Teddy Abrams

“…we’ll all start at zero and meet there again.” I loved that.

There is something beautiful about starting back at zero. It kind of levels the playing field a bit. Not to say that this means all of our previous work is discounted. The fact is that every artist, when starting something new, all start from that same place. Monet started every painting with a blank canvas. A new roll of film is put in your camera when the other one is finished. A blank page was how Hemingway started every piece he wrote. Teddy Abrams sat down with a blank sheet of staff paper to write his grammy nominated piece. As artists, starting at zero is something we all share and will continue to share until the moment our work comes to an end. It’s one of the many things in the creative process that artists all share.

This should be encouraging.

Your photo could win a Pulitzer, your song a Grammy, or your film an Oscar. Or your photo gets rejected, your song has five listens on Spotify, and you can barely get your film into festivals. In both cases the artist starts at zero. In both cases, the artist is like the family in the photograph looking through the binoculars searching. Sometimes we find things easily. Other times it will take a while. Sometimes we look through the binoculars so long that it leaves little circles around our eyes where they were pressed in for a while. And that’s ok. The relief you will feel when the binoculars come down will be worth it.

If we long to create and have the humility to meet at zero, something will come out of it.

If you have recently started back at zero and are making something, I’d love to hear what it is. I’ll meet you there.

Cheers,

Andrew