XX - When the first time isn’t the best time

I watch a lot of reaction videos on YouTube. Mostly music, with the occasional movie or show thrown in. (Princess Bride first time reactors? Priceless. People discovering Thomas Sanders? Ahh, so fun). It’s a guilty pleasure of mine, apparently, living vicariously through people experiencing a thing I love for the first time. I’ve toyed with the idea of making reaction videos myself…but aside from the fact that I dislike being in front of a camera, I also don’t trust my first reaction to a thing.

The first reaction I have to a thing is untrustworthy. Like, I know this about myself. My brain is much too busy acclimating to the new, to overcoming whatever preconceived notions I’ve formed ahead of time, to making sense of what I’m experiencing, to form anything so concrete as an opinion.

Did I like that brand new song? Did I like that show? I dunno.

How the heck am I supposed to know that yet? At best, I didn’t immediately dislike it. At best, I have the urge to experience it again. But I won’t know if I like it until the third or fourth listen…watch…time around.

Nightwish’s music actually taught me to trust that. They taught me that if it takes me multiple listens for a song to click for me, that means the song has sticking power. Sometimes Tuomas does things in his music that make me go, “Oh…I don’t know about that. I don’t think I like that.” But once my brain has had time to get used to that weird little curve in the road, once I can expect it and see where it fits in context, click.

If Hanson was the band that made me fall in love with music, Nightwish was the band that taught me to listen more than once.

#

Society is obsessed with firsts.

First words. First steps. First day of school. First vacation. First job. Love at first sight, first kiss, first time. First concert. First house. First child, and then we get to experience a handful of those firsts again vicariously through them. First in line, first on the scene, first to post the cool picture, first to rock the cool new trend, first to break the story. Hell, there are still people who comment “First!” under every YouTube video they watch. We love novelty. Firsts are the defining moments of one’s life. They are threshold crossings, magical, life-changing, sacred rites of passage that are only diminished through repetition.

“You’ll never get to experience ____ for the first time ever again,” and that statement is always said with an air of sadness, of loss.

And yet.

For me, the first time is usually…disappointing. There’s nothing inherently magical about it. It never lives up to the hype. Hell, for me, the first time is usually the worst time, because I don’t know what I’m doing, because I’m trying to keep up, because I can’t absorb all the nuances, because I’m watching myself experience this thing while thinking, “I must react appropriately and absorb this moment for posterity because I won’t be able to get it back once it’s over.” So yeah, I’m generally much too busy doing the thing to enjoy it.

As an example, listening to a new song is like walking through a mansion you’ve never been in before. I might notice a few neat pictures hanging on the walls, a few unusual bits of architecture, but mostly I’m just trying to learn my way around. Once I know the way through, then I can slow down and appreciate the rooms. Once I’m familiar with the rooms, then I can comfortably dig into all the little hidden gems in those rooms.

I did not love Even in Arcadia on my first listen. I did not expect to. I trust the architects, but it was a twisty mansion that took a solid week to properly explore. Sleep Token is unsual in the way they get under my skin, where for a period of time I was simultaneously ambivalent toward their new music and unable to listen to anything else. I think I played EiA for three straight weeks before I could even bring myself to listen to other Sleep Token.

To me, a thing’s repeatability is a better measure of its worth than its novelty. Give me the second bite. Give me the third concert experience, the fourth novel, the twelfth time playing through an album where I can sing along with every word. I have to remind myself, constantly, that I do not love something less just because I didn’t love it immediately.

I don’t like the pressure of firsts.

#

This sometimes comes back to bite me in my art.

Any artist knows that giddy feeling of inspiration striking, where you need to pursue that awesome idea RIGHT NOW. Sometimes, that idea requires acquiring a new skill, which you gladly throw yourself into learning because your brain is still buzzing with inspiration energy.

Then, you go to make the thing, and here’s the problem. You’re too green at the new skill to do your burning, buzzing idea justice. You need to practice first. But your brain doesn’t want to practice, it wants to MAKE THE THING already, because by the time you practice enough to feel skilled enough to make the thing, the passion will have fizzled. On the other hand, if you jump straight into making the thing, it will not turn out the way you want and you’ll be disappointed, possibly to the point of never wanting to touch that new skill ever again.

Over the years, I have learned something important.

While I’m working, Inspiration will preen and tell me this is the bestest, coolest Art ever, that everyone will marvel over it, that I can lay down my brushes forever once I’m done because this is It, the Magnum Opus. The moment something in the project doesn’t go as planned, Inspiration’s dark, grouchy twin comes out, telling me I suck, that I’ll never create anything good, that I might as well give up before I embarrass myself.

Here’s the thing: they’re both liars. They both want me to think that what I’m doing is not repeatable, that if this first attempt to try something new fails to live up to expectations, then I have failed. It’s not true. I am not Michaelangelo, and I do not suck. If I mess up a project, I can always do another one. No piece of art is so bad…or so good…that I can’t give it another go. I won’t run out of pencil strokes. There will always be more words. The result will be different, and inevitably, better.

Don’t be so precious about your work that you can’t move on. (Interestingly, it was writing that taught me this; if you do nothing except polish that first chapter forever, you’ll never write the whole story, and the next one, etc). Each thing you create marks where you are on your journey, no more, no less.