Ambition
What is it like to loose your ambition?
I have lost most, maybe all, of my ambition. This is weird. Since I have always been a very ambitious
person all of my life – so far. Of course
as an Artist, ambition is a pretty
vital component of this kind of career.
I mean, without ambition how
does an artist progress? How do you
survive in the shark tank that makes
up most of the world that is Art,
without a strong, or rock hard, sense
of ambition? Competition either raises
your livelihood or sinks it. How you
deal with, handle, the competition defines success
or failure.
Or, does it?
An argument with this notion might be, “The artist should
work strictly for beauty, the creativity, the expression of their ideas. Competition shouldn’t enter into it.” Which, to me, is the dilatant’s viewpoint. To me, a serious
artist who does not feel a sense of competition with other artists is not
really trying to progress or increase
their skills. This doesn’t have to be a hostile competition. Just a serious
understanding that it does exist.
The professional tennis player does not
have to hate his or her opponent, but
they never forget that they are
trying to win and therefore defeat another person. As is said, “That’s why they keep score.”
In order to win,
each player must try their best to be better at the game than those against
whom they play. As they do their best to
win, they increase their skill – to progress.
But they don’t have to hate
anyone else. They don’t have to be hostile about it.
And, each artists needs to compete against themselves in
each previous professional incarnation,
as it were. Every time I begin a new
piece, I try to do it better than the last one.
I mean, what is the point otherwise?
This does not mean that any work
done previously is any less valuable. It
is that each successive piece should
show some sense of maybe (?) trying
harder, or improvement ? As an artist of over a half-century of
effort, that to me is life. And this is the
only fraction of my own personal ambition that remains.
Isn’t this really, mostly, true of any profession, career,
life work, whatever? You maybe start in
the mailroom and do your best to work your way up.
At my age and at my position, or stage, in my professional life, I just don’t care anymore. I don’t mean this in a negative way – like in
I have given up. I am too stubborn – or stupid – too hard-headed to give up. Even when I have proven, without a doubt,
that I am just not all that good at something – like … oh say, painting – I still
paint. I still love to paint with oils
on big canvases. But I know I’m not very
good at it. I do try every time, with a new canvas, to improve, to do it better than the last one.
It’s just that I don’t care if I’m not as good as somebody
else. I don’t care if anyone else even
likes what I do. I have no ambition to prove anything. When I was
younger I had the ambition of becoming a Department
Chair, a Director of This or That,
a member of the School Administration,
a Senior Faculty Member and Master Teacher. Recognized and respected. Now I just don’t care about that either. In the past I have held all of those
positions. I have a track record of being very successful at those things. Presently I don’t have any of that. I’m a part time, largely ignored, bottom of
the rung, teacher. My Art is still
unrecognized. Nobody, outside of my wife
and children, even knows most of what I have created. I made it.
Everything I ever made was either sold or traded for something. I have almost none of it in my possession. And
I don’t care.
When I teach, and I have always felt this way, I teach everything I know. No secrets, No hiding anything. I push my students to be get better, to be
better, than I am or ever was. I want them to take what I have learned,
all that I have done, and show me up. To me, that’s how Art gets better, more
exciting, more intrinsically valuable to our world at large. That’s evolution. “That’s the whole point of teaching.”
Students should walk away from a class and no longer need the teacher.
Is it because I have
given up. Once again, no –
not at all. I left the profession and
retired for two years and when I was recruited back, I thought, “What the hell,
why not. Being retired is boring.” So I made it clear that I did not want any position or responsibility
of anything more than coming in and teaching and leaving right afterwards. No ambition left. And, what for. I am no longer building a career.
That to me is one of the huge
benefits of getting older. That is, if
you have tried your best and accomplished pretty much everything you set out to
accomplish, why continue to hump so
hard. Not that I have become anyone of
note or some kind of big shot. I just had a sort of bucket list when I was young – maybe not a big or
whoopy-dupey bucket list according to some – but it was pretty big to me. And, as the years went along, I was always
adding to it. Then, one day I was old
enough to realize that it was time for me to move over and let some younger people, with more energy, to take
over.
It just seems to be the smart
thing to do. Sooner or later every alpha gets taken down. And, that is often a really bloody battle
with the old worn out alpha getting
the shit kicked out of him/her. I say,
“Walk away when you’re winning, or at least breaking even.” The alphas who live the longest, I believe,
are those that just say, “Okay, you wanna take the lead, you wanna be the first
in the battle (every day), fine. I’m
gonna take a nap.”
