Quite a few years ago I watched a documentary film called Beauty Is Embarrassing. It was a quirky comedy-documentary about a quirky artist by the name of Wayne White and his quest to bring more humor into the world of visual art. There was something very profound relating to the title which he slipped into the documentary. He said that in a way being an artist is a fundamentally embarrassing situation – that we as artists are creating something and presenting it to the world in the hope that others find it in some way beautiful, and the vulnerability of that is embarrassing at times. It took me a long time to understand at a gut level what he meant. I got it intellectually, but I only recognized that embarrassment within myself very recently.

The items on my guitar practice schedule that are most likely to become overdue are pretty much all my own compositions. I always brushed the pattern off as me being bored with my own words and thoughts and constructions, but a few days ago I noticed that wasn’t the problem. I am in fact a bit embarrassed at times by my own search to create beauty, and there is no greater example of my efforts than my songwriting, which with time has become only more revealing emotionally.

Most of the time, especially when I’m getting on stage a lot and it’s going well as it usually does, I feel like what I am. I’m a person in the full bloom of somewhere around midlife, with enough experience to offer perspective, and enough youth to easily offer energy and hope in spades. I feel like I have a lot to share, and it’s cause for celebration. I started wearing more red over the last few months because I finally feel like I can pull it off – I don’t feel like the vibrancy of my clothing is dwarfing me when I wear this color anymore. But sometimes something comes up and if only for a moment, I don’t feel that way.

Sometimes I feel a bit like an 11-year-old trying to socialize at a school dance. I remember those days and my train of thought back then only too well. “I’m here because I feel like I would like to dance with someone, maybe even one of the boys from another school, but I’m not totally sure how it’s supposed to work, and I’m not 100% sure how to get started, and suddenly I feel unsure about my choice of outfit, and I don’t know if those boys are looking at me because they think I’m cute or because they’re thinking of playing a prank on me. Maybe I should go get a glass of that disgusting punch just to make it look like I’m comfortable here, say hi to my friends, and then call Mom and ask to be picked up early. Then I could eat Zingers in front of the television and relax. 1970s TV reruns always get my mind off things, so I’d be able to forget about this whole sordid, silly attempt to fit in, or whatever this is. What in the world was I thinking coming here?”

Of course the problem wasn’t who was looking at me or why, or how to go about dancing, or what I was wearing. I was hoping to be seen as beautiful, and eventually to co-create something beautiful in the form of a nice dance with a boy my age. There was a vulnerability in that, and it is the same vulnerability that lines the walls of any school dance with young people who don’t know how or whether to get started. Ultimately it’s not that far off from the vulnerability that still makes me shy away from my own handwritten repertoire.

Likewise, it’s not that there’s anything the matter with my songwriting, and in fact there seems to be a great deal right with it. The most important purposes of songwriting for me are to convey something of my life experience in a way that words alone cannot do, and to provide others with some sense of commonality between my experience and their own – again I want to connect at a personal level, even though it’s going to be parasocial with most of my listeners. People have confirmed many times that I’ve achieved those goals, sometimes in words, sometimes in the form of purchasing CDs or becoming Patreon subscribers, sometimes in the form of tears running down smiling faces when I have been out performing. But part of me still finds it embarrassing sometimes – the fact that I put so much time and energy Into creating things and putting them on stage hoping somebody will find them beautiful, especially because they’re relatable. Sometimes shutting down and shutting out that part of myself feels safer, like snacking on sweets in front of familiar reruns when I was a kid. After a while habit takes over, and my own songs are the songs I just don’t play as much as others.

I’ve been in professional training with the Tamalpa Institute for almost 2 years now, and one of the lessons that has deepened time and again for me is how beautiful vulnerability itself is. Even the sad and conflicting truths of people’s lives, when presented honestly and with intentionality, are incredibly beautiful and a great privilege to witness. So then, what if the search to create beauty isn’t cause for embarrassment after all? What if the hope of showing something of ourselves to another and having it embraced is actually among our finest and most powerful qualities? What if that hopeful, vulnerable striving is one of the most noble and beautifully human gifts we can offer each other?

I hope that all of us who call ourselves artists of any sort can learn to take justifiable pride in our vulnerability.