ACT III: Negative Space
Set and Setting: Tuesday April 8th, 1975. The 47th Oscar Award Ceremony, honoring the films of 1974 is about to commence. By the end of the night, Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather Part II would take 6 of its 11 nominations. Three of these would land directly in Coppola’s hands. Only two individuals have ever won more Oscars in a single evening: Bong Joon-ho for Parasite at the 92nd Academy Awards in 2020 and Walt Disney’s 4 wins at the 26th Academy Awards in 1954. This is rarified air. The photograph of Coppola holding his three statues is amazing. I can’t get enough of his smile.
It is hard to imagine the legendary director of The Godfather and Apocalypse Now being anything other than himself, but let me tell you a story.
Once upon a time, there was a boy named Francis Ford who would dream. He would dream every night of being a writer. Until one day he realized: He kinda just…well, sucked at it. He tried and tried but his work had no spine.
I am not making this up. Hear the man, himself:
“When I was 16 or 17, I wanted to be a writer. But everything I wrote, I thought was weak, and I can remember falling asleep in tears because I had no talent the way I wanted to have.”
Note: It actually took me a minute to chase this quote back to its source. You can find the original in this Esquire article.
Now, because he was a weak writer this boy gave up on his dream. It’s not what you do in a Disney movie, but Francis Ford was honest with himself. This truth set him free. He was free to explore the talent he had as it diverged from the talent he wanted. Graduating from Hofstra College with a BA and UCLA with an MFA launched him into the profession where he would make his name. His first film was The Godfather and ever since that day he has been Francis Ford Coppola.
The contrast between the young writer with misplaced dreams and the jubilant triumph of the ascendant director could not be sharper. For Francis Ford Coppola, learning what he was not was a critical step in his discovery of what he would become.
I look at this story and I see Negative Space.
Negative space is the region of a visual piece where nothing is depicted. It is usually dark, empty, or black. Negative space is often used to separate the subject of a composition from everything else.
At first glance, you don't see it, but look closer: negative space actually shares a border with the subject itself. In fact, the shape of the subject is defined by negative space around it.
The trick to using negative space effectively is having the wisdom to know what details to include and what details to black out. It takes the same kind of wisdom to know where your talents lie and where they don’t. This fundamental understanding is often acquired through trial and error. In my case? It took a whole road of trials followed by error after error.
See, there was a job I once dreamed of having. Between acquiring the requisite degrees and garnering working experience within my field, I spent 20 years pursuing this job.
I didn’t get it straight outta school (not a shocker) so I started freelancing. Year after year, I worked in the firm belief that I would eventually be worthy of permanent, full time employment. Every time a position opened up, I’d apply. I experienced varying degrees of success during the application & interview process, but each attempt ended the same: I wasn’t a good fit. They were rarely this blunt. I wish I got paid for each time I have been told the applicant pool was, “unusually strong this cycle.” Is it weird that the application pool is always, “unusually strong?”
The rejections piled up and I continued to freelance for the companies that turned me down. This made me colleagues with the people who had beat me out of those full time positions. It was hard. It was really hard to work and work and work for something that seemed to only ever slip through my fingers. Yeah. Waddup, Sisyphus?
Then, one day I realized why I couldn’t get these jobs. Though there was overlap between the work I did as a freelancer and the permanent positions I applied for, the bulk of the full time workload was administrative. I am a great freelancer, but anyone who has known me for 5 minutes can tell you that administration is not in my wheelhouse. Kill me before asking me to be an administrator. Bury me alive. Drown me in hot lava. Please, let me bite down on this iron file. Feel how secure it is trapped between my dentates? Now WRENCH it from my teeth, but do not under any circumstances ask me to fill an administrative role in a complex, densely-networked company.
The sadness I felt at being passed over for promotion broke over my head into relief like a generous spring rain. I didn’t get those jobs because I was not gifted to fill those positions. I didn’t get those jobs because I had no talent the way I wanted to have. I discovered what Sisyphus has yet to learn: you become a hell of a lot happier when you stop pushing your boulder.
It would be easy to look back at the first 20 years of my professional career and think, “What a waste.” I felt like that for a while, but the resources I spent, the time, the effort and the emotion were not wasted. They were invested in discovering what I am not.
Return with me to the idea of negative space. The blacked out regions of a canvas don’t paint themselves. Learning what you are not takes study. It takes work. It takes practice, trial and error. I did not waste this first chapter of my career. I used it to discover something vital about myself and my gifting. Now, I carry that wisdom.
Look, I’m just a dude with a blog. You may or may not believe me, but I know you’re gonna believe André 3000. I stumbled on this clip from an interview a few months back.
He says, “You gotta put the time in to figure out who you are and whatchu not too. A lotta times whachu not is very important, ya know, because you can wanna be something but your strength is actually in something else.”
He hit me where I live. He didn’t stop.
“That is what makes you start to do your own thing. That’s when your skin starts to breathe and you start to get into your primal self. And your primal self is the best contribution to the planet.”
Knowledge of who you are and who you are not come together. Bright highlights and deep shadows meet to form an image. Filling in the inks of your life’s composition is still painting. Nothing is lost when our failures become part of that story.
I’ll catch ya next month on the 3rd,
-JT⚡
