Field Notes
Call yourself a painter and now you have to paint. Call yourself an artist and everything you do is a statement.
There’s a difference between saying I paint and saying I am a painter. One is an act. The other is a role and roles come with audiences, and audiences come with expectations, and expectations come with an obligation to keep being the thing you said you were.
The noun is useful, I get it. Nobody asking “so, what do you do?” wants to hear “it depends”. They want a noun. Something they can file you under and move on.
But the noun is also a trap, and most people who use it early don’t see the trap until they’re already in it. Saying I’m a writer turns it into something you have to live up to. Saying I write lets you just do the thing.
In Japan, craftsmen practise for decades before they’re comfortable using the word artist. They understand what the word means and that the bar is high. You don’t claim it. You wait until the word fits. Some wait until their eighties or nineties. Some never use it at all.
“I do this” asks less of you than “I am this.”
Felix Ng
Co-founder, Anonymous
@felix.anonymous