Let’s talk about failure for a moment.  In my experience, as well as for every other artist who tries to “make it”, perhaps the hardest part of dealing with one’s artistry is the problem of overcoming rejection.  Every artist faces rejection constantly and many eventually turn to something else because of their inability to handle it.  I face rejection constantly and have learned to know that it’s never my spiritual man that’s rejected, but rather just my mortal mistakes.

And ya’ know, those need to be rejected.  It’s my duty to uncover the errors and correct them so that they will have no future basis.

Rejection is not failure.  The only real career failure you can have in life  is to turn 80, look back and say, “I wish I had tried to do that — I wish I had attempted that journey.”  Now that’s failure.

I had a young man speak to me after a concert once who said that he wished he had taken the time in his life to learn to play the guitar and that he was sorry that he would never be able to play as well as I play.  Now he was on the verge of failure.

I first picked up a guitar my sophomore year in college.  Alan Smallwood, a killer musician that I know, played his first synthesizer at the age of 27. You’re never too old to learn something new.  If you think you are, that’s failure.

In my theater experience in New York, I’ve written music for some 40-50 shows – two thirds of those shows were commercial flops — and yet I’m considered to be successful.  A baseball player who only gets 3 hits every 10 times at bat — he too fails more than two thirds of the time — yet if he keeps up this failure/success ratio for 15 to 20 years in the majors, he has an automatic ticket to the Baseball Hall of Fame.  Whoever heard of that?  Fail two thirds of the time and you’re considered a terrific success!

So what does ‘success’ mean?  Mr. Webster defines it to be “a favorable  or prosperous termination of attempts or endeavors”.  I’d rather look at it as a favorable or prosperous attempt or endeavor and leave the ‘termination’ part out, because what’s important in the process is the doing (the favorable attempt), not the outcome.  If the doing is 100% full-bodied, full-minded, dedicated and joyful (and only you know deep inside when it is) then I believe the outcome will take care of itself.

In a lifetime of work, the good you do will win out.  I worked on one particular rich, deeply emotional, well crafted, standing ovation show which did not particularly impress one critic and consequently the show failed to run because it got one bad but important review.  Was it a failure?  No!  It was a success.  The experience of working on the show was a great one for all concerned.  The audiences loved it.  It inspired people and raised consciousness night after night.

And I’ve worked on other shows that were fraudulent at the core, but were able to pull the wool over the eyes of the critics and run as hit shows on Broadway.  Were they successes?  Not really.  Perhaps they were successful at some things, but in the overall summation, looking back, they were not life moments that I’m particularly proud of.

I’ve written deeply personal, touchingly beautiful songs that have never been heard by more than ten people in my lifetime.  Are they failures?  No.  They’re successful beautiful songs and the experience of writing them was full and rich.

And I’ve written what I might now call ‘crass commercial junk’ for the bucks that has been heard  by millions of people and made me lots of money.  I’m not proud of it at all.  I only hope I’ve learned from my mistakes.

I repeat.  Success is in the joy of doing. If the joy of doing is full and rich, the outcome will take care of itself.

We read and hear about so many Hollywood stars and famous people who burn out their lives chasing success.  Why do they do it?  Because that’s all they ever wanted in the first place.  They didn’t want to be artists, they wanted to be stars.  So they skipped over the nose-to-the-grindstone-learn-your-craft-paying-your-dues part and missed the whole point.  Then even if they got rich, had millions of fans and became famous, they were still unsatisfied because somewhere along the way they missed the point.  They reached for the wrong thing and when they got it, it had no real content and so its value had no real pay off.

We in America are obsessed with celebrities.  It’s a sad comment on our maturity as a nation.  Many of these people are really only notorious for their looks or their money or because their publicity agent knew how to do his job.  And yet we value these people like they were gods.  It’s a weird society we live in.

Here let’s hear from the experts on the subject.

“Failure is only the opportunity to begin again, only this time more wisely.”
~ Henry Ford

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
~ Thomas Alva Edison

“Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.”
~ Sir Winston Churchill

“There is no failure except in no longer trying. ”
~ Elbert Hubbard

“Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.”
~ Albert Einstein

“You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don’t try.”
~ Beverly Sills

“Diamonds are nothing more than chunks of coal that stuck to their jobs.”
~ Malcolm Stevenson Forbes