Who will like our work

Did you know that Georges Bizet was booed at the premiere of Carmen? He died three months later – his heart could not stand it. Did you know that Charles Garnier, who built the amazing opera house, the Paris Opera, was not invited to his fifteenth birthday and had to buy a ticket at the box office? And for the Vienna Opera, the pride of the current Viennese, its outstanding architects August Sicard von Sicardsburg and Eduard van der Nüll did not receive even a word of gratitude during their lifetime – only malicious criticism that they say that the theater looks like a train station …

Well, if a person works formally, without investing his soul, he is better protected from ingratitude – spectators, listeners, students. But then he is subject to the torture of alienation, boredom and emptiness. And if we work with all our heart, not out of fear, but out of conscience, and even take on almost impossible ambitious projects and still bring them to a result – how can we support ourselves, what can we rely on? By the end of such a project, the creator is almost exhausted – he has already given almost everything. When his spiritual child is revealed to everyone and he is waiting for an answer, a very dangerous time comes: after all, often everyone is indifferently silent or in a hurry to make a judgment, not caring too much about his feelings, not understanding the deep vulnerability experienced by the author, who stands in the world with an open heart. Everyone who has done something good, invested properly, knows this moment. It hurts to feel like such a hopeless fool. It’s a shame – and we give a vow: “Never again! ..”

One film director teaches his students: “If you live with the attitude that you are making a film for the audience, for the country, then you will burn out very quickly. Remember: no one needs your film except you! Nobody. So shoot for yourself.” Such a thought is sobering. And in this, even a little cynical, thought, there is more support than in the naive youthful hope for human love, for recognition and glory. You can really live with this attitude: “I do this because I personally need it. This is the truth: I can’t not do. How about you, I don’t know.” But how cold it is, this attitude… Despite the fact that I myself often cite it when good creative people rightly complain about the lack of positive attention from the outside to the results of their work. And yet, there’s something missing in it for me. Love, probably. And the belief that my deeds are coordinated on some level superior to me, somewhere out there, in eternity. Belief that someone loves me and subtly guides me. It would be a very big support … However, you can find it – in Pushkin. “By the command of God, O muse, be obedient, Do not be afraid of resentment, not demanding a crown, Accept praise and slander with indifference And do not dispute the fool.”