EY: (on the struggle to be an artist)
but also because you have to violate your family's expectations of a normal career. Your father and mother will think you're naive, nuts, or not serious.
Mike Geary Memphis
>>Not too "high", Andy, just too childish. Like Santa Claus and
the tooth fairy, there's no such thing as your 'genius'. You've been laboring under a mythology all these years, alas!
A note on the psychology of the curse of genius. Say you want to be an artist, a painter, and everyone in your family are tradespeople or accountants or salesmen. But you want to be an artist. It's an uphill struggle, not just because it's hard to succeed as an artist, but also because you have to violate your family's expectations of a normal career. Your father and mother will think you're naive, nuts, or not serious.
What will redeem your unusual career choice? Not just being a good painter, a successful painter, a happy painter.
No, the only thing that will justify your decision is to become--you guessed it!--a GENIUS. And that's like the kiss of death. It's hard enough to be a good painter. But you will only justify your life path if you become a GENIUS PAINTER. So you work thousands of hours--because it takes at least 10,000 hours to become good at anything--totally hating yourself, your work, and your future. And you have no patience with the learning curve because you SHOULD be a genius.
"Genius" then becomes an emblem of neurotic goals you set yourself. "Genius" or "failure" with no middle ground.
Most people in the arts have some version of this inner baggage. In my experience, those who suffer least from this genius-syndrome are the children of academics, because academics rarely stigmatize their children for unusual life paths.
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