Create conversation, not communication with your Art
Overcoming digital crickets one question at a time.
This is not a post about how to game XYZ algorithm.
Actually, it is. Except it’s not about getting extra views, subscribers, and restacks.
It’s about creating Art that changes people and gets past the goes in one ear, out the other barrier. Because even when you say your Art is just for you, there is a part of us that wants to help people with it.
People will be silent even when they see an article so jaw-dropping the night before their final English exam ever, that they write in their answer that it made them see Hamlet as an uplifting and hopeful play (thank you Lawrence Yeo) (finally got that off my chest after a year).
Your Art is usually met with the reaction of your substitute teacher making a joke about the current TikTok trends. You’re communicating something, but your audience doesn’t know what they’re meant to respond with.
Why?
You talk but you don’t listen
Not everyone will buy Art or attempt to understand it.
That’s okay. Art is a niche, just like finance, politics, tech and food.
Not everyone consumes it, not everyone will choose to make the time for it. But for the people that want to be a part of the Art world, but don’t create — you must give them space to enter the conversation.
There have been so many articles I wanted to comment on, so many exhibitions that made me feel accepted and so many films after which I wanted to email the director directly. But I didn’t know what to say.
How do I start?
What if I sound like an AI chatbot?
If I enjoyed it this much, wouldn’t they already be getting loads of messages like mine?
And the piece would float down into my subconscious, only to influence my writing when I would least expect it.
Had there only been a clearer path to opening up a conversation, I could have brightened that Artist’s day.
But like a snarky yup bro (teenage roadmen in Dublin), there was too much talking and not enough listening.
Breaking the ice between you and your audience
99% of my TikTok viewers don’t get what my poetry is about.
A lot of the comments (hate comments and regular ones alike) I receive on my poetry are related to not understanding what the poem is about and what they’re meant to feel.
I attribute that to the way school killed Art.
Everybody is scared that they don’t feel like school taught them to feel, or that they find it boring at first.
Instead, guide them. Galleries have plaques and signs for a reason.
But instead of statements like — The brushstrokes in the upper half of the painting are meant to signify this and that, turn them into questions.
What does the first stanza remind you of from your last vacation?
How did your body feel when you heard the chorus?
People need guidance.
Start the conversation.
Because not only will your fans understand your Art better, so will you.