A matter of throwing yourself under the bus…

Lasse’s post the other day, about the feeling about being naked with the release of our music, got me thinking about a quote from John Goodman, the actor. Seth Godin tells the story in his book “Linchpin“, that this experienced actor was offered a role in the play “Waiting For Godot” in 2009 and said:

I didn’t think I was up to it at all. I had no confidence in myself. So it’s just a matter of throwing myself under the bus and crawling my way out…
…I’d rather be here finding the goddamn part, and I hope I never do find it, because I don’t want to slide into complacency. What would I do then? Start cockfights in my dressing room?

This is not just about that he has bad self confidence sometimes, or if he’s afraid of failure in front of other people, this is about that he’s seeking out that place under the bus, because that’s where he want to be. Outside and unsecure and not in the personal safe area, where you don’t have to risk anything, where everything is run from recipes, but nothing really ever happens.

To create art you have to throw yourself under the bus, there’s no art to be done in the safe zone. And I’m pretty sure that all those artists we admire so much for their music and artistry feel this way, every time they create a new piece of work. And if some of them go for security, which happens sometimes, we feel their intentions directly, and we wait for them to get back there under the bus.

When you look at artists in this perspective one can understand that some have a hard time to cope with this; some quit, some never get started, some that don’t even have a safe zone, go under, like numerous jazz musicians and rock stars, and still others stop making art, play it safe and move into obscurity. Then there are some, like Bob Dylan and Neil Young for example, that constantly amaze us through long careers. And I think that’s where their greatness lies, that they can’t imagine being anywhere but under the bus.

Well, what we’re doing now may be safe areas for others but for us it’s not, we’re going to places where we haven’t been. But in the future, if we start sounding too self-assured, give us a kick when you see us at the bus stop 😉

/Pär