Creating things somehow entangles the narcissistic desire of ownership for me, I noticed.
After settling on a vision yesterday at the hackathon, I set out immediately to accomplish it. And after spending 4 hours of creating this object on my own and with a help of another partner, I immediately had the thirst to pride it as our creation: but I noticed what emanated most strongly was my pride to call the idea and design creation my own. I became reluctant to let other people who wanted to join in later in on the project; I wanted to accomplish all aspects of the project, and the desire to dominate grew. A teammate wanted to do the soldering, but I told him I wanted to do it and he let me. When other people wanted to join in on the project and alter my vision, I became strongly antagonistic and dominating. I felt that I had done so much work and invested so much of my time in it with only the help of another teammate, thus it wasn't right that someone else wants to alter the vision and claim the object as her own, too. I was very, very reluctant to share--and I had made sure the first thing she knew was that this project was designed for our group performance and made sure that she was okay with us claiming it. I didn't even ask for her name or try to get to know her first. My territorial instincts kicked in hard. It was a very odd feeling that just dominated, something strong that I could feel physically inside my body.
Thinking back, I know it serves me little to be this selfish. During the hackathon, I had no desire to really work with other people unless they contributed in helping me achieve my vision. I realized it's a pretty limiting perspective and it's a perspective that sets out to cut the possibilities short. Perhaps I need to develop a coping mechanism and be more present with myself in order to realize when it's happening and go beyond what I'm feeling at present. It was very hard for me to see the other side of the perspective when I felt that way and had all that feeling simmering inside me.
Mina,
ReplyDeleteI have been struggling with this as well, particularly in the process of conceiving a scene for our final show. As the only one in my group with any experience performing using an experimental multimedia approach, and the only native English speaker, others in my Arts Collective look to me to lead the discussions. Every time someone suggests an idea I don't necessarily agree with, I have been trying to pose the question of inclusion to the group first. I have begun to appreciate the members of my Arts Collective for their creativity, but it is hard to relinquish control when you care deeply about the result. Perhaps through this process we will both grow as people and learn to be more open. It may result in a better product.