“Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.”
- Walt Whitman, Song of Myself
One of the more difficult things I’ve had to work to undo as an artist is this cultural bias toward consistency, toward sameness. And not only sameness compared to others around me but sameness compared to myself a year ago, 3 years ago, 10 years ago. I’m starting to think about this fetish we seem to have with consistency, this idea that it’s better to remain the same, as if staying true to oneself means never changing, never expanding.
But this isn’t the way humans work. We do change, and we do expand whether the world likes it or not. It’s really just a question of whether or not we’re going to live into that change, own our contradictions, embrace and celebrate change… or, hide behind self doubt and an oddly unexamined over-valuing of regularity.