Brain Food #825: Doing something you are not good at
Living and working in the unknown
Thoughts of the day
Recently, I started sketching and drawing in a little notebook. I have little training and talent in this, but it is something I wanted to give a go. I began to appreciate the notebook in a new way; using a sketchpad that is a safe space to make mistakes, because mistakes are the path to improvement.
Such practices create a new space, between being comfortable with what you are good at and the fear of the unknown. The expectation inside the notebook is that you do not have to possess a certain set of skills or reach a specific level of performance. It is the opposite of public channels, where everyone appears to be flawless in mind, spirit, and ability.
French-American theatre director André Gregory started drawing after the age of 70. After his photographer friend Richard Avedon died, Gregory wrote him a letter. In it, he highlighted the importance of doing something merely for the sake of it, without any expectations:
“I’m drawing now, and I love it. I love doing something I don’t know how to do, returning to a ‘beginner’s mind.’ I don’t do it for critics or posterity, which was so important to you. Drawing brings out a joyful side of me.”
Gregory’s letter asks multiple questions. Do you have to be dedicated to just one art form? Is it ever too late to learn something new? And, more importantly, does everything one produces need to be done for the sake of ‘work,’ or an audience?
In an interview with Artnet, he addresses some of them:
“As I am a theater director and actor and have been following that art form for 50 years, it’s very exciting for me to give myself so fully six years now (with two different teachers) to drawing—an art form which I don’t know; to challenge myself and my brain and my hands to go places they have never known before, and to be doing it purely for the love of doing it. In other words, I am breaking barriers never faced before and living and working in the unknown. At 80 years old, that is a great thing to be doing.”
To learn something new, even something you are not particularly good at, can be an act of discovery.
Below are two of Gregory’s drawings, one of his radio, one of himself. Through a new practice, we may even begin to notice our surroundings again, and pay homage to everyday objects, or picture oneself in a new way.
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