The language of “Good” and “Bad”

“There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so”

—Hamlet

We’re raised in the schism of “good” and “bad”.

I have always had this strong compulsion inside me to be a “good boy”.

Society and our caregivers use “good” like a carrot on a stick and the result is that I have learned to edit and repress my innate impulses.

I have learned the language of “good and bad”. My whole life, I’ve seen everything through the lens of good and bad. Movies, actors, my auditions and even other people are either “good” or “bad”.

This obviously has a strong impact on the way I approach being an artist.

I habitually reference an Idea of “good” over what wants to come through me.

In fact, it seems that my super-objective in life is the pursuit of being “good”, it is behind most of my endeavours.

Not only when making a song, a film or audition am I’m trying to make IT good but I’m trying to use the creative process to make MYSELF good.

Deep inside me there’s a belief that I’m not good, that I’m somehow bad. I feel the need do whatever I can to prove otherwise, to prove that I am good.

Even in writing this, I can feel how much I want this post to magically MAKE me good almost as strongly as I want it to BE good.

“Whats the point of making it if it’s not good?” I heard a student say, who was exploring his art making motives within this paradigm.

This schism has infected me to the core and robbed me of the pleasure of just “being me”

The idea of “good” and “bad” has woven itself into the nature of our culture and the practice of art making.

My inner critic loves to put everything I, and everyone else does, into the boxes of good/bad.

What if good/bad wasn’t objectively real?

What if we realized the truth; that we are inherently good and that whatever comes out of us is good, even if someone doesn’t like it?

What if just because I don’t like something it doesn’t mean it’s bad?

This shift away from the paradigm of good and bad can open us up to the freedom of creating what’s in us to create instead of striving and editing ourselves to achieve this idea of good and the validation it promises.