A lot of the time, we’re just getting the autopilot response. It happens in most areas of life, but it’s especially prevalent in the arts. After all, it’s a domain where people really, really want to know what ‘works’.
How to get an agent? How to get streams? How many singles before an album? Social media ads? No social media ads?
In a complex world of emotions and incomprehensible randomness, it shouldn’t be embarrassing to admit that some questions we face don’t have catch-all answers. But, sadly, it’s these type of advice-centric questions in the arts that really seem to bring out the most confident autopilot responses. They’re usually vague or broad, yet often delivered with disarming conviction.
Frequently, an autopilot response is used when there is no good answer, but the real damage is done when an autopilot response dictates one’s behaviour as an artist. After all, what is autopilot really? It’s relying on what has worked before to dictate your path. It feels safer, but really it’s a way to avoid going it alone, on your own terms, while carving out your own unique route. In creative domains, this is stagnation.
Ironically, when something occurs which is at odds with the autopilot response (a band succeeding who don’t follow the prescribed rules, for example) many dispensing advice don’t seem to notice the contradictions – or they shift to a new response which then becomes the latest, in vogue autopilot response. All without noticing the capriciousness.
‘Release loads of singles before an album because that’s what Idles did. Release cassettes because that’s what Billie Eilish is doing. Only tour and don’t bother making an album until you can sellout in London because that’s what booking agents like to see.’
It’s the death spiral of novelty-chasing driven by survivorship bias. That is, for every band who followed the Idles model and succeeded, thousands did the exact same thing and failed. We only pay attention to the tactics of the winners, failing to recognise that, often, the losers used the exact same tactics and are now sat around wondering what went wrong.
This isn’t necessarily a dig at anyone; we’re all susceptible to it. The excellent ‘How Minds Change’ by David McRaney puts forward compelling evidence and arguments that we don’t even notice when we change our minds a lot of the time. We like to feel consistent. We don’t always have good answers but we want to feel we are in control – that the world is coherent and that there’s method to the madness – so we fall back on sticky narratives so as not to appear stupid and useless. This is why the autopilot response reigns.
It’s safe.
If there’s an answer to this, it might look something like this:
Exercise a reasonable amount of scepticism and actually embrace the antithesis of the autopilot response – those responses that seem a bit weird or counterintuitive. That might be where the interesting breakthroughs are. The cracks. The terrain that hasn’t been captured and corrupted by common knowledge.
After all, autopilot only really works if many others have traversed the same route before you. In art, that most likely leads to being a copycat or arriving after the party has moved on.
