The Gatekeeping of Paranoia
I don’t need to rehash the Timothée Chalamet issue. Many have, and the backlash has made it all the way to SNL. I will leave it there. He’s a bébé. Craft and knowledge comes in time if you are truly authentic with your calling, or it won’t be. Time will take him on.
What it reveals, I think, is about the gatekeeping of our industries. I use plural because I am thinking about opera AND music theatre. I see both sides. I see artists who are well-established who are generous, open, willing to share with emerging artists, and I see the paranoid and gatekeeping of “artists” (because, are they, really?) who have become so jaded that they couldn’t share anything honestly if they wanted to, or tried. That assumes they would want to or would want to try.
Generosity doesn’t cost anything. It truly doesn’t. Generosity of spirit and experience, allows an opportunity for an emerging artist an opportunity to learn something from someone who has been on the path and understands it.
Generosity of knowledge and spirit can come from another artist, from an artistic director, a music director, teacher, coach. Generosity allows for movement for both the person giving it, and the person receiving it. It has the quality of selflessness. It doesn’t need to be repaid. It is rather, paid forward. Generosity reveals the depth of the human being and artist offering it. Lack of it, reveals the shallowness and the paranoia of what a person is pretending to gatekeep. Ironically, they are gatekeeping nothing but their own paranoia and pathetic behavior.
You will NEVER lose anything by being generous of time, knowledge, encouragement. You will lose yourself with paranoia that someone is trying to take your job, or in a self-involved power struggle, that reveals more about you than the artist that could use your expertise in. If you think it doesn’t, then your paranoia has moved into a self-delusion that is way above my pay grade.
Artists are created. They create. We create. We tell stories. We develop stories. We reveal stories through character, voice, gesture, truths. We lift stories to a higher relief for an audience to experience literally and figuratively. Learning HOW to do this happens through practice, and through the beauty of the lineage it comes from. Artistry comes from and develops from lineage - craft, artist, practice. When you, as an artist, can learn from someone who comes before you, this is a gift that you simply cannot walk away from.
If you are that artist who decides, and I mean, DECIDES, not to share your experience and your support, ignore the emerging artist that could grow from your experience, then you are part of the problem in our industries.
No one is beholden to anyone. If you choose to share, then do it with an openness and clarity. If you are the recipient of the knowledge, acknowledge it, be thankful and work with it.
We all stand on the shoulders of others. Wouldn’t it be a wonderful world if we acknowledged that, and set up our stance to allow another to stand on ours?
Recognize the gatekeeping. Call it out. And then, put your hand out and pull someone up with you. There is no paranoia is a truly open and truthful response to those that come before you, and those that are following you. This is the movement of art. We have to be in motion so that things don’t stagnate. Stagnate art is not art anymore. Art has to have ongoing life breathed into it and we do that through the work, and through the openness of spirit that the art demands.
Art does not thrive in the stifling air of gatekeeping, paranoia, and ignoring the movement of the industry, the artists and the art form.
Call it out, and lean into it. Keep the momentum. Your voice, literally and figuratively, is so important, and must be heard for change to happen.
Gates are meant to open wide. Paranoia has no business near a gate. It might hit you on the butt on the way out…
with fondness & fierceness,
