and i worry: is this me?
“She belongs to that sect most swiftly, irrevocably trapped by New York, the talented untalented; too acute to accept a more provincial climate, yet not quite acute enough to breathe freely within the one so desired, they go along neurotically feeding upon the fringes of the New York scene.
Only success, and that at a perilous peak, can give relief, but for artists without an art, it is always tension without release, irritation with no resulting pearl. Possibly there would be if the pressure to succeed were not so tremendous. …
Which is not to say that the world owes [her], or anyone, a living; alas, the way things are with her, she most likely could not make a poem, a good one, that is; still she is important, her values are balanced by more than the usual measure of truth, she deserves a finer destiny than to pass from belated adolescence to premature middle age, with no intervening period, and nothing to show.”
Truman Capote, “New York” in Portraits and Observations.
…Except replacing New York with Europe, which in a way, is similar: the kind of place you move to looking for a fresh start somewhere sophisticated, where the stakes are raised but you hope to finally live up to your potential. But it is just a hope; it doesn’t always work out.
I think part of why I hesitate to really give in to giving creative endeavors a chance is this worry, what if it turns out I am one of the “talented untalented.” It is a sort of trap if you are, an unanswerable question. Or maybe every creative-minded person doubts themselves this way, until they find the right way to express themselves.
