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David McElroy

making sense of a dysfunctional culture

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I’m losing need to explain myself to those who misunderstand me

By David McElroy · August 3, 2019

For most of my life, I lived with a fear of not being understood.

When people misunderstood me in some way — my intentions, my ideas, my motivations — I rushed to explain myself. The more I grew and changed, the more my ideas and thinking diverged from that of the mainstream culture around me, so the more I felt alienated. The more I felt misunderstood. And the more I felt a slight panic that I would be “in trouble.”

This took me a long time to figure out.

When I was a child, I constantly had to explain myself. My father could launch into one of his verbal assaults any time the mood struck him. If I said the most casual of things which he misunderstood — as “disrespectful” or wrong in some way — I could be under assault without warning. And once he started, he never backed down.

I learned to go to insane lengths to be clear to him, but I still worried about the inevitable misunderstanding — and I grew up to take that same fear of being misunderstood into all of my life.

Over the years, I’ve frequently read of artists who declined to explain what their work meant. That always puzzled me, because I thought they would want people to understand what they were trying to say. Something about it seemed arrogant or rude to me, too, as though they were saying they were too important to explain themselves.

But I think now that when I heard those people, the little boy inside me was screaming, “Don’t you know you’ll get into trouble if you don’t explain yourself?!” There was something terrifying to me — on a gut level — about not explaining. I unconsciously reacted like someone who knew those artists were violating a rule which I knew could get themselves punished.

But after spending most of my life trying desperately to be heard — and to get people to understand my ideas, thoughts and feelings — I’ve finally started to understand those artists who don’t want to explain.

This has been a slow and gradual process for me.

Explanations about art and ideas are generally going to be misunderstood. Those who are going to “get it” will get it from the work itself. If you spend time explaining yourself, you’re not doing new and better art — and your explanations are almost certainly going to be misunderstood by people who are never going to understand no matter what you say.

For a long time, I’ve seen my work as expository, but not anymore. More and more, I don’t care to explain. I still want to be understood, of course. I need someone to love me and understand me on that level. And I fervently hope to be understood by those who have ears to hear what my work is saying — but I need to forget about those who aren’t going to understand no matter how much I explain.

Most real artists are filled with self-doubt to one degree or another. I started out filled with more of it than most, because I judged myself according to how well others understood what I was trying to say. When others misunderstood — as often happened — I felt like the little boy who couldn’t make himself understood enough to be emotionally safe. I felt panicked.

For whatever the reason, I’m slowly getting past that. There will always be a tinge of the self-doubt, but something about it has shifted for me. I’m less worried now about whether I’m expressing myself well — and I’m more hopeful of the right people finding my work and connecting with it.

I can’t control whether I have talent or not. I’m confident that I have some, but I have no idea whether it’s enough to deliver the success I want. But I can ultimately control how I deal with doubt.

I’m slowly leaving more of my fears behind. (My father’s death helped.) I finally understand that getting past the need to explain myself is a key step toward creating the art that’s trying to get out of me.

I hope you understand that, but it’s OK if you don’t.

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Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: art, childhood, father, fear, psychology

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For “throwback Thursday, let me introduce you to For “throwback Thursday, let me introduce you to Sam. In 2009, I took in a young feral cat who I named for the early American revolutionary Samuel Adams. He was one of the most confident — downright arrogant, in fact — cats I’ve ever been around. He had an amazing personality and I immediately loved him. He was no more than 8 or 9 months old when he suddenly died for reasons that my vet couldn’t explain. Even though I had him only a short time, he was one of my all-time favorites. #tbt #cats #tabby #feral #birmingham #alabama
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On a live awards show Sunday night, one man made a joke about a female celebrity. The husband of the celebrity was offended and hit the man who made the joke. Or maybe it was staged for entertainment. Who knows? Who cares? Social media is full of discussion — and even arguments — about this idiocy today. This baffles me. Let’s assume for a moment that the event happened as reported. People have been having such idiotic fights ever since there have been humans. Half the bars in the world see such brief dustups regularly. It simply doesn’t matter. The fact that so many people believe they need to talk about this — or even need to have opinions about it — is more evidence of the bizarre media brainwashing that convinces many to care passionately about brain-dead trivia. Your life will be happier and saner if you focus on yourself, your family and your friends, not on whatever scripted (or spontaneous) bilge that the media wants to pipe into your home.

I’m in the middle of migrating this website to new servers this week. This means you might encounter some unexpected behavior until I get all the bugs worked out. Clicking on my links (including this one) might cause your browser to give you the message that it’s a site without a current security certificate. It’s not actually unsafe, but there’s something which isn’t yet set up for the security certificate. I apologize for any such errors you might encounter while the process is going on. If you notice any problems with content which didn’t migrate properly, I would appreciate you letting me know the details at davidmcelroy@mac.com. Thanks for your patience.

I often wonder what animals think when they look at us and consider the society we’ve created. Yes, I know this is fanciful and unrealistic, but what if they could? Would they be astounded at how we treat each other? Would they be disgusted by the ugliness and pettiness which fill so many of our daily interactions? The truth is that I’m feeling pretty disgusted with humanity tonight. I made the mistake of reading some online interactions that I should have avoided — and it sickened me. The people involved appeared to be vile and stupid and arrogant. I wish I could pretend they’re a tiny minority, but I know better. It’s times such as this when I most need to escape much of “civilization” and disconnect from their world. If humans are going to be worthy of “ruling this planet,” we have a lot of growth to do. And I fear that growth is nowhere in sight. So my buddy Thomas, above, and all of his friends would be right to judge us harshly — and to think, “Why do you folks get to be in charge?”

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Have you ever had what you thought was a new idea — and then discovered that “old you” had the same idea years ago? I had that experience tonight. And it’s been wonderful. I came up with an idea tonight for a very short satirical film that would be a promotion for a fictitious college. The point is to make the college promote — as good things — everything which is actually terrible about most modern colleges. Then I remembered a fake college that I invented back when I was in college. I had created student recruitment brochures and various newsletters back then, so I decided to call my “new” college by the same name I’d invented years ago: Ochita College. As I searched my computer for any old material I might still have about Ochita from the past, I discovered an email I sent to someone in 2009 — outlining essentially the same idea which I came up with tonight. Since I didn’t remember writing that, it felt like magic. So my next film project just might be this one instead. If all goes well, you might soon see “Ochita College: Your Future Starts Here.” This should be fun.

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