Dealing with criticism and why art should ruffle a few feathers

I believe that if you’re an artist, no matter how hard you try to run from it, art will always find its way back into your life. Ultimately, it’s at the very core of your being. Unfortunately, I also think that comes with a life of endless self-criticism, self-doubt, loneliness, and often very little appreciation for the graft that goes into it.

The flip side is that it’s a fascinating way to live. The whole world becomes an observational ground from which you can create something out of nothing. And the best part is that thing you create might actually resonate with someone else. It might make them feel something. And isn’t that connection what we’re all really craving these days?

However, one of the more irritating things you have to accept about being an artist is that once you put your work out into the world, you also put it up for public scrutiny. There will always be people who don’t like it. Some of those opinions will be valid, some might even be deserved, and some will be ridiculous.

Last year, I released an album touching on my cultural roots in Ukraine, Russia and England, as well as my Jewish ancestry. Needless to say, it ruffled a few feathers. I really can’t think why? It’s not like there’s anything going on in the news that relates to any of those parts of my identity… right… right……??

To be fair, I honestly expected worse from the internet. All in all, it wasn’t too bad. But I had mentally prepped myself because I knew exactly what I was doing when I set about writing an album called Black Sea. I did consider scaling back some of the ideas, particularly the more “controversial” songs: Waldemar Haffkine and Elisheva, which deal with antisemitism; No Talking, which explores censorship in the USSR; and even the title track itself, which is about refusing to be defined by borders.

Whenever I received an angry comment about the album, my first thought was actually: good.

The art did its job.

It caused a reaction. It evoked an emotion so strongly in someone that they felt compelled to take time out of their day to tell me how much it annoyed them. Would I rather they had sent me a gushing message telling me how brilliant the song was? Obviously. But you can’t have everything!

And honestly, I think artists sometimes forget that making people uncomfortable can be just as valuable as making them feel good. Art doesn’t always have to reassure us or confirm what we already believe. Sometimes its job is to poke at something, challenge an assumption, or make you sit with an idea you’d rather avoid.

Some of the criticism I received was that I had glamorised the USSR. I was also told that the USSR “wasn’t that bad” and that I should stop making it seem as though it was.

You see how this works on the internet?

That one always made me laugh, because it completely misses the point. Everyone’s experience of history is different. The USSR was, in fact, a great place for some people. It was horrendous for others. Those two things can exist at the same time.

My family suffered under the system. Those were the stories that were passed down to me, and that is the perspective from which I wrote those songs. I wasn’t attempting to write an objective history of the USSR. I was writing about my relationship with it, inherited through my family and shaped by their experiences.

And no one can tell me that my own family’s experience is wrong (even if they think they can.)

Maybe that’s another reason art should ruffle a few feathers. Because the moment you put your own perspective into the world, you’re inevitably going to collide with someone else’s. And that’s okay. Actually - that’s great. In a society that emphasises conformity, isn’t it good to make something that pushes people a little out of their comfort zone? I think so. And my hope is that in 20/40/60 years, my future relatives will listen back to that album and understand what happened to our family. And that will always be more important to me than a stranger’s comment on the internet. But until then, my best advice is just to laugh. The people writing those comments are almost never the ones brave enough to put their own art out into the world in the first place.