Success Quote by Dave Van Ronk

Van Ronk’s line has the scuffed-knuckle pragmatism of a working musician who watched genius and ego trip over the same loose floorboards. Coming out of the 1960s folk circuit, he’d seen careers stall from terror of bombing onstage, but also from the weird vertigo that hits when the room finally listens. He’s not selling positivity; he’s diagnosing distraction.

The clever turn is pairing failure and success as equal hazards. Most motivational talk treats them as opposites, but Van Ronk frames them as two costumes for the same actor: self-consciousness. Fear of failure makes you play not to lose, sanding down risk until the work is “safe” and therefore forgettable. Fear of success is more insidious because it masquerades as virtue: I’m just not ready, I don’t want the spotlight, I’m not that kind of person. Underneath is the dread of obligation, of being pinned to an identity you didn’t choose, of having to repeat what worked and live inside other people’s expectations.

“Your work” is the anchor and the rebuke. It implies craft, routine, and the daily, often unromantic labor that actually makes art. Van Ronk is telling you that both kinds of fear are ways of outsourcing your attention to an imaginary audience: the one that might boo, and the one that might crown you. Either way, you stop listening to the song in front of you.

In a culture that fetishizes outcomes - virality, validation, the myth of the big break - this reads like a quiet refusal. Do the work. Let the chips be noisy.