The Lost Relics of Our Art

First published on February 8, 2018

On my computer is a folder. It contains more than 20 word documents, each with a set of lyrics and a set of chords. They are songs, written with care and a sprinkling of pain, in my late teens and early 20s. In my late 20s I came back to them in a moment of loneliness, and as I came back to myself from that loneliness and struggle, I came back to the music. It had been such a part of me, but I had left it behind, and I could feel that leaving that creativity and performance behind wasn't quite me.

I played two of those songs live, to a crowd of 100 people. And I felt the connection to those pieces of art, and I didn't want them to disappear forever. So I reached out to a friend, to ask if he would help me create something from them. Not from all of them, but from the best of them. He couldn't do it, because he himself was in too challenging a place in his own life. He didn't feel he could do them justice. And then, for me, the time had passed. Because they aren't all that special, and my voice is not so good. And if I recorded them, I would want to do them real justice, just like John did. And so those songs sit there, in word documents, on my computer. Lost relics of art. Unshared.

Noel Gallagher, in the rush of creativity from leaving behind his band, which had become restrictive to his creativity, produced two albums at once. He released the first album, with the second due to follow six months later. But by the time it got there, he felt the time for those songs had passed, or perhaps they weren't quite right, and so the album was never released. Maybe some of those songs have resurfaced in his two subsequent albums, but I suspect at least some of them haven't. They just sit there, on some hard disk somewhere. Lost relics of art. Unshared.

Creativity shows up for each of us in different ways. We don't all have a pile of songs or poems, hidden away somewhere. Although I suspect far more of us do than we realise. But for others it will be a business idea, perhaps a list of them. Unrealised. It might be 1,000 or 10,000 photographs on a hard disk. Unshared. It might be five ideas, designed in the pub on a Friday with colleagues, to shift the culture of your organisation to one which would delight you to be part of. Unavailable. To you, and to the people around you, whose work might be changed by them.

If there is one thing I have learnt from 18 months of posting a short post, like this one, written in 12 minutes, once a week, it is that my measure of the usefulness and impact my writing isn't very good. Because people get in touch with me, and they tell me they have read it, and they have liked it, and it made a difference to them. Sometimes they have fed back to me by liking a piece or commenting already, often not.

I regret that Noel didn't publish his songs, because so many of his songs over the last 25 years have had such an impact on me. And not just me, on hundreds of thousands - probably millions - of people. He might be right, that these weren't good enough. But I want to listen to them. I suspect, one day, someone will dig that out and release it. That is what has been happening with David Gemmell, my favourite author.

After his death, two of his books, one unpublished and one out of print, have been released. David felt that as they were modern detective stories, they didn't fit in with the canon of his work. But it has been wonderful to feel the effect of his magical and soulful writing again. I'm glad these lost relics of his art were found. And shared.

But what are the relics which you are not sharing? Who are you to say that they will not deeply affect me? Who are you to say that they will not change the course of the life of someone you love, or someone you have never met?

Return to some of those relics, today if you can. Return with a generosity. See them in the real world. Yes, they may not be as good as the perfection in your mind, but that is part of the nature of art. And, yes, they may be better than your Resistance told you when you created them.

Perhaps you have done the work, already, to create change in the world. Perhaps all you need to do is share it. A small, but not so easy thing to do. But perhaps now, the You of Today can see past the doubts from the You of Yesterday, and share it.