Not going to really put much thought or energy into this one, but I have a bone to pick with the creatives surrounding me: Writers, Game Developers, Illustrators, Engineers, Actors/Actresses, Bloggers, Podcasters, and overall Designers. This is your wake-up call:
THE PEOPLE YOU ADMIRE IN YOUR INDUSTRY WILL NOT MAKE YOU SUCCESSFUL!
It’s been disheartening to see people with so much talent wait and perch onto social media begging for established people to look their way and take pity on them. Elon Musk is not in the market to work with you. Tyler Perry is not in the market to work with you. Black Sands is not in the market to work with you. You are not guaranteed a lift just because you have ideas and concepts neatly written and ready for higher echelon placement. Ya’ll have to get that through your head when you come into the creative workspace, you are general competition; both friendly and serious.
In the spaces I frequent, I watch and I wonder when we’re going to stop trying to work up and work AROUND. We have way too many people around us who have the same skill, if not better than the ones we paw after, that we don’t utilize and we instead choose to struggle. Every time I get around illustrators and writers and producers on my level, I constantly ask: “Why don’t we just…work? Let’s put something out ourselves and blow the industry up with our own ideas?” and I’m always met with “No, not a promised profit and I don’t think you’ll understand what I want.”
And this is why, as black creatives, it’s so hard to work amongst our people sometimes.
That mindset is built on a historical concept that we will never be able to be content with having long-term goals that supersede our own for the time being. Why do we have to compete in this setting? Can’t it be as simple as…just making a product that comes from the heart and from narratives of our own without having to think of sacrificing “my personality”? Do you think straight actors lose their own sexuality when they would play gay characters? No, it’s a bag! Let’s get that mindset!
In short: If you seek to create, stop looking up to the marble statues and start looking at the ones holding the chisel before they encase themselves in the same marble.