Perspective is everything.
I thought about this recently while watching King Beyonce’s ‘Life is but a Dream’ documentary. She made a very interesting comment on her approach to her craft.
“I always battle with how much do I reveal about myself. How do I keep my humility? How do I keep my spirit and the reality and how do I continue to be generous to my fans and to my craft and how do I stay current? And how do I stay soulful? It is the battle of my life.”
So in essence her greatest professional challenge is staying relevant; maintaining her fame, keeping her material current and fresh etc. I admire that; that desire to consistently create more than mediocrity, to always go over and above the satisfactory. This spirit of excellence, is so essential for everyone to imbibe and is honestly why Beyonce has no contemporaries.
Yes, really.
But her attitude to her craft and fame in general, brought to mind this Lauryn Hill interview I read ages ago, where Lauryn gave the reason for her sudden departure from the music industry. I like lauryn Hill and I think her depature from music was premature. It is a testament to her talent that the Miseducation of Lauryn Hill album never feels outdated…I don’t know how but that album just transcends time, for me. House, Electronica, Afrobeat might be all the rage but listen to that Miseducation album today and you’ll realise that it still sings our emotions and speaks our truth. And that is the essence of music.
So in this Lauryn’s interview, she was explaining why she felt she had to leave after getting to the top in her profession. The excerpts of the interview are detailed below,
Lauryn: “I always thought that the matrix was battling the enemy out there. Until I realized, until you conquer the enemy in yourself, you can’t deal with anyone. In order to be used by God, you really have to be used. We always want to be used for the glorious jobs …God put me on a stage, in front of the people at a Grammy show and a nice dress on…let me just praise your name. But that’s not being used, sometimes in order to be used you have to also be humiliated, you have to be kicked and beaten. And in that situation, the person who is kicking and beating..he’s feeling more pain than you are.
As a musician today, I’m not in the studio right now and everybody in my world thinks I’m crazy. What’s going on? You need another album out. The time is running out, you have a certain window to make music. For a little while I listened to that and I was in the studio working real hard trying to get it done. Music was created, definitely music I think people would appreciate but it wasn’t my best. It wasn’t my best because there was no substance and there was no substance because there was no experience. I’d gone from the studio to the stage, back into the studio again. The only reason why “The Miseducation” was the album it was because merited of experiences that took place before the production part, before the creation. What I realized was I can’t create and not live, I can’t be in this vacuum of creativity without life.
In hip hop, we’re all trying to get to this next level without the next level finding us. Life is like peaks and valleys. Some people explain that as good times, bad times. But I actually think its learning, mastership, learning, mastership or study, mastership, study, mastership. I went from the top of one mountain, I’ve mastered something and people appreciated it. Once you’ve been on top on that mountain, you have to move this way but in hip hop people are like, I’m not moving….I’m the master, I’m great, I’m dope, I’m here, I’ve arrived, I’m not going anywhere! That’s when you stay stuck on one hill, one mountain. God’s intention is that we study and master a bunch of things. So here I am descending this hill and everybody is like “Where are you going, we’re suppose to be on top of the hill?” But it’s an exciting time, definitely an exciting time for me because I’m at the foot of another hill. This hill is totally different, navigated differently but I get to learn. Once you learn and you go through that, you’re on the top of another one.
I would encourage everyone to never be afraid of not knowing…find out because that’s how you get to mastership. Let’s not be mediocre in our greatness. Think big and think in doses and think in experiences and don’t be afraid of experiences that teach you.
This just made me think how different Lauryn Hill and Beyonce, two major artists, view fame and success. I mean, there is really no wrong option or no right way to view most things. We live in a world with a billion shades of grey; ash, granite, fog..all versions of grey. It really is up to the individual to see and interprete life in the way that is personally useful and beneficial. I think Beyonce and Lauryn exhibit two very interesting perspectives on life and self-actualisation. Beyonce says, “I got to the top of my career… but I want to maintain my position, so I keep searching for new ways to remain a necessary part of this industry”. Lauryn on the other hand says “I got to the top of my career..but I don’t see a need to remain here and maintain this success when there are other fields, professions, talents to be mastered”. Neither approach to success and growth is wrong; they are both right, the right answer for each artist.
In the end, everything really boils down to personal perspective. Perspective IS everything. In the end, it’s your definition of stagnancy, settling and success; what these things mean to you as an individual that count, isn’t it? So it’s amazing that we keep letting ourselves be defined by other people’s ideas of what we can be, what we ought to be, what we might be. If you prayerfully, purposefully and personally define your own success, you will never be off “A path”…because you are the creator of ‘THE path’.
Write your own love story.
Oh Wendelyn! 