Because this is a blog about writing and creativity, I’ll just focus on the artistic lessons that my father taught me. My father wasn’t a musician, a writer, a painter or a traditional artist of any sort, but in many ways, he taught me how to be an artist.
1. I learned empathy from my dad. First of all, I’m not trying to come across as hypocritical. I’m not always the most empathic person. There are things I’ve done and said to people that I regret. And at times, I can be distant and cold.
But my father cared deeply for people. He would always play the devil’s advocate, and make me see things from other people’s sides when arguing with someone. I used to hate it. I would say, what about me? What about my feelings? But by posing the opposite opinion, he taught me to see from other’s points of view. He taught me not to just think about myself. My father taught me how to see things full circle.
And my father hated to see pain and suffering. It tormented him. Whether it was an animal or person, he hated abuse, and he hated to see anything hurting. He had a Buddhist quality about him, and I learned to see the pain in other people from him.
All art is emotional expression, and life is full of suffering. Whether you are creating characters, songs, or poems, you have to climb inside the skin of others and feel their pain.
Empathy doesn’t come from seeing suffering—it comes from feeling it.
2. My dad taught me how to be stubborn.
My dad was a nonconformist. He didn’t listen to people. He was headstrong and did everything his own way. When my dad was in high school, he was goofing around in class, and the teacher took him out in the hallway. He was going to beat my father with a stick. My dad broke the stick over his leg, and said, “You’re not hitting me with that thing.” Then he walked back inside. He didn’t follow rules, behaviors, or conformist expectations. He didn’t care about trends or material items. He had money, but he dressed poor and drove beater cars. He was intelligent, but you would never tell because all he did was joke about everything. He set his own course in life, and he remained confident in his decisions despite external resistance and pressure.
I believe to be an artist you have to be stubborn. You can’t listen to people. In so many other avenues of life, you are told to listen, to obey, and to conform. But art is different. You have to stubbornly follow your own path, even when it is embarrassing and humiliating. Artists are given advice by other people constantly, but you have to be careful who’s advice you take. You really have to set your own path. It’s a mixture of confidence and stubbornness, but artists have to follow their hearts and resist what others want and expect.
I always say the hardest thing about being an artist isn’t the pressure from others. It’s the pressure from yourself. The hardest thing to do in life is—doing what you really want to do. I believe an artist has to follow their heart and plug their ears to the sounds of others and the critic within themselves.
3. My dad taught me humor.
I’ve written and spoken about this at length, but I’ll try a different angle here.
I think my dad was funny because he had a rough childhood. He was abused and picked on a lot, and he learned how to make people laugh because he didn’t want them to be sad. It comes down to empathy again, but my dad was really good at making anyone laugh. He had timing like I’ve never seen before. He knew exactly what to say and when to say it–absurd or not–he always nailed it. Whether it was calling out the elephant in the room or making fun of himself, he was great at saying funny things at the right time.
My dad could make fun of himself. He never took himself that seriously. He could be the butt of the joke in a very intense moment to make everyone forget the severity of the situation. Oscar Wilde once said, “Artists have the most important job in the world, and they never take the world serious.” It comes back to humility again, but humor can teach you how to not take yourself, or life, too serious.
My dad taught me the classics of comedy. One time he was stationed in South Korea, and he sent us a box filled with VHS movies. In this box, I found two films that changed my life forever–Mel Brook’s The History of the World and Eddie Murphy’s Delirious. I watched these films when I was six years old, way too young to view this type of content, but I loved them, and I watched them over and over—I learned blueprints for funny. My dad loved the Three Stooges, he loved Red Fox in Sanford and Son, he loved Cheech and Chong. He created a comic library for me that taught me how the greats approached laughter. If you want to be a writer, you have to read. If you want to be a comedian, you have to watch.