Labeling Oneself as an Artist and Why I Have Avoided It
Filed Under: creativity, personal
I’ve strongly resisted the label of artist for a long time, because I don’t feel worthy of it, on the one hand, and on the other hand, to avoid the negative connotations that are entwined with the label in my backwards, redneck brain.
Who is an artist? (the ingrained notions)
Here’s what I grew up thinking of artists–not actively thinking or deliberately deciding to believe, but just absorbing in Kansas/Midwestern culture.
Artists are people who do not have real jobs. They are as likely to spend their time drinking absinthe, doing drugs, and sleeping around as they are to do anything honest and deserving of compensation. Artists do not contribute to the growth and welfare of society in meaningful ways. They are probably not very smart, because if they were smart, they would have gone into a profession like engineering or medicine where they could actually do some good and make real money to support their families. Artists, above all else, are irresponsible, childish, and poor. POOR!
Conversely, artists are talented (even if that talent isn’t valued very highly). They can draw anything they can imagine effortlessly. Their imaginations are superior to almost anyone elses’s. They speak a secret language of color and form, and really, if you want to rearrange your living room and get some new curtains, an artist would not be a bad person to ask. They’ll probably help for beer money.
Why I am not an Artist (the rationalizations)
I’m creative, sure. I do a bit of writing, but writing isn’t art, because art is visual, and writing is language. And yes, I know how to operate a camera, but artwork should convey emotions, tell a story, and my photography doesn’t convey any such thing. Anyone can pick up a camera and point it at something. Anyone can take enough shots, throwing out the bad, to make themselves look like a moderately decent photographer.
I’m a web designer, but design is not art. Design is communication, and it has strict rules (rules that I struggle every day to learn and understand better). And anyway, I primarily excel at writing code and solving technical problems, less so than making things beautiful and artistic.
Despite my ingrained beliefs about artists as professionals, I grew up secretly wishing I could be some kind of science artist, but I wouldn’t ever really because I wanted to contribute and make money. And finally, for some reason, I cannot ever be an artist because I cannot draw anything that I picture in my head.
Why I am an Artist (the realization)
First of all, most of the bullshit I grew up believing about artists is just that–bullshit. Artists are as intelligent as anyone else, if not more so,as responsible, and they are no more likely to drink heavily and do drugs than anyone else. They contribute to society in less quantifiable ways than say, an engineer, but they act in a way as society’s conscience, as it’s outlet. As a means of self-reflection. Artists play a role, and while I don’t quite understand that role, I know they have one and it’s deeply important. Being an artist is a real job, and has all the baggage that jobs have. It’s also really, really hard to make a living at.
Being any good does not determine whether one is an artist or not. And art encompasses many more skills than just drawing. My photography may be something anyone can do, but every once and a while I make something nobody else but me could make. I’m actively trying to sell prints of my work actively, so I guess that right there makes me an artist in the same way that actively pursuing publication made me a writer.
Design may or may not be art, but I’m a working creative individual. Sometimes, what I create is art. Sometimes, it’s crap. Well, more often than not. But I share more in common with working illustrators and painters now than I do with my friends who spend their days slicing DNA in laboratories.
So, yeah. I am an artist. Whatever that means–I’m still learning. It’s not all that I am, but I’m done not calling myself that just because I can’t draw and I grew up believing some kind of dumb things about who writers are. My life is centered around creative acts of one form or another, so. There it is.
Have any of you ever resisted labeling yourself like that, for similar mixtures of reasons? I’m curious to know if this is difficult just for me, or if it is for others.
PS: I keep trying to fix that drawing thing. I’ve been stuck in the first couple of chapters of “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain” for a couple of years. Maybe this year will be the one that I finally get past the weird tracing stuff and start learning how to stop myself from drawing on the left side of the brain.
Exit Funk, Stage Left
Filed Under: creativity, personal
You might have noticed that I was in a bit of a funk last week. Thank you to everyone who made lovely comments on my last post. I was feeling a little ashamed about my whining there, so I haven’t thanked or replied to anyone individually. I appreciate you all being there for me when I get like this. Thank you for putting up with it.
I’m seeing things more clearly this week, and I feel some energy returning. Part of the problem I suspect was that I had a really nasty cold, combined with coming down from all the excitement of being back home to see folks.
I’m focusing all my energy right now on becoming the best web designer I can. I think the time for exploring other potential careers is not when you’re scraping by as a freelancer. I’ve been slow to commit to life as a freelancer, worried about any number of things associated with it, but I’m slowly conquering those fears and starting to treat my business like, well, a business, instead of just a guy working out of his office all day.
I have plans to rebuild this site from the ground up, as well as build a photo store to sell prints of my landscape photography. Stay tuned for more about all that in the future.
Thanks for hanging in there with me. I will hopefully start to have cool things to show and share again soon.
Writing: Your Subconscious and You
Filed Under: My Writing, Writing Process, creativity
I have a very rocky relationship with my subconscious.
On the one hand, my subconscious is the font of my best ideas. Even when I writing something that has come mostly from ego-brain thinking, it inserts cool things, catches ideas that I missed the first time around. It’s sometimes like having a better writer sitting on your shoulder catching your missed opportunities.
On the other hand, my subconscious’s interests are not always marketable interests. My subconscious feeds me stories about Kansas about once a week. The state needs to start writing me checks for the PR. Lord knows they need a positive face what with all the wackos that populate my home state. So I write a lot of stories about Kansas or set in Kansas. I’ve yet to find a market for that stuff, and I doubt anyone wants to read about it. And yet my subconscious persists. I’m wrestling with Potatohead (that’s what I call my subconscious) right now about a story that involves mole men and Kansas. Excited to read that one? Yeah, didn’t think so. I keep telling him, we need postsingularity stories that use the entire galaxy as their setting. We need fantasy stories that take place in the New York subway system. What does he feed me? A story about a woman whose abusive dead husband comes back made out of potatoes after being buried int he garden.
Yeah, I actually wrote that one. The rejection Nick gave it at Clarkesworld was enough to put me off writing for a year. Not one you’ll probably ever read. There are a lot of these.
On rare occasions, one of us presents an idea that the other finds just as fascinating. My story “The Yeti Behind Me” is a good example. The idea of ghosts of extinct animals popped up in conversation. I felt the indication of Potatohead’s interest in the form of an explosion just behind my right eye. Potatohead is not subtle. But if we agree on something straight away, I know it’s got legs.
Problem has been, lately, I have stopped trusting Potatohead. He’s fixated on the same things much of the time. He’s not giving me ideas that I can get excited about. And vice versa. I spend all day thinking of story ideas and asking “Hey, Potatohead, what do you think of this one?” His response is generally a resounding “meh.”
I feel like the two parts of my brain are at war lately Each one knows something useful about writing, but they are not agreeing on things nearly often enough for me to feel like I’m moving forward with my “career.” I can write stories based primarily on the input of one half, but those stories are flat, and aren’t going to take me anywhere.
There’s one other, unrelated thing about Potatohead that ticks me off. When I’m asleep, people can talk directly to Potatohead. I have had long and varied conversations in my sleep that I conciously have no recollection of. The thing that gets me into trouble is, Potatohead doesn’t know that I/we are married.
Sarah has come to bed late on several occasions, only to see me shoot upright in bed and demand “Who is that?”
“It’s me,” she says.
“Me WHO?” Potatohead asks.
“Sarah,” she says, beginning to be a bit more exasperated.
“Sarah WHO?”
And that’s the last straw. “Your WIFE,” she snaps. “Go back to sleep.”
“Oh. Okay,” says Potatohead and down he goes back to where he came. And the only indicator I have that this conversation ever happened is that my wife is pissed at me all morning for no apparent reason.
How does one force his or her two minds to sit down and come to some kind of amicable agreement? We have crap that needs to get worked out if we are going to continue to make a career of working together. This partnership is turning sour, and I need to straighten things out quickly. I also need to get it through Potatohead’s half-brain that asking “Sarah WHO?” is not a good thing for either of us. If anyone has any suggestions, I’d love to hear them.
The Evolutionary Basis for Creative Depression
Filed Under: creativity
Last week, The Economist ran a really fascinating article on recent research into the evolutionary benefits of depression. Why do we get depressed? Why did such a trait come to be, and if it’s so detrimental to our health, why hasn’t it been selected against in the population?
Dr Nesse’s hypothesis is that, as pain stops you doing damaging physical things, so low mood stops you doing damaging mental ones—in particular, pursuing unreachable goals. Pursuing such goals is a waste of energy and resources. Therefore, he argues, there is likely to be an evolved mechanism that identifies certain goals as unattainable and inhibits their pursuit—and he believes that low mood is at least part of that mechanism.
Unobtainable or unrealistic goals? Like, say, beating the odds and selling a story to the New Yorker? Or selling a screenplay to Hollywood for 6 figures? Or how about winning a Hugo award before you turn 30? Could this explain why an unusually high number of artists and creative types suffer from depression?
Creativity is often all about unrealistic goals. The problem is, without them, we would not strive to achieve the things we do finally achieve. Aim for the stars, shoot for the moon, as they say. So, depression is tied directly to our ambition and stick-to-it-iveness? From the article:
Dr Nesse believes that persistence is a reason for the exceptional level of clinical depression in America—the country that has the highest depression rate in the world. “Persistence is part of the American way of life,” he says. “People here are often driven to pursue overly ambitious goals, which then can lead to depression.” He admits that this is still an unproven hypothesis, but it is one worth considering. Depression may turn out to be an inevitable price of living in a dynamic society.
Depression, an inevitability of a dynamic society and a creative lifestyle? What do you think? Is it possible that those of us who suffer so much “creative” anguish would be much happier with our lives if we aimed lower? But would that just be giving up, and just as bad as being depressed? Which is worse, a lack of ambition or being depressed?
