to unbox, perchance to dream....
May. 18th, 2002 08:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gurdonarkMy own Achilles heel is disorder. I wish I could say that I am congenitally incapable of keeping my desk well-organized, but blaming inadequacy on a birth defect seems a bit too easy to me. Soon I must head off for a brief walk, praying that the recent rains don't ruin the experience, and then to my office to finish unpacking the boxes newly moved into the new office. I have a reasonably good critical eye,
but the devil in the details of this sort of thing keeps taking my soul, and I don't even get Helen of Troy or incalculable riches in exchange; perhaps some more mundane trade was elaborated
on my credit card application.
I am eager to see the world in my little suburb and edge of the suburbs area. I need a strong dose of butterfly, bird, tree and flower.
I also need a diet Coke, but that sentiment deserves its own sentence, since "one of these things is not like the other".
In a downturn in my personal self-satire, my little poetry book failed to sell in 2 straight auctions. This is not surprising, since its time is really the xmas season, when people impulse buy things and are willing to check out a simple
bit of humor. Surprisingly,though, rather than do what I have done before--pull it from auction for a few months--I've put it up at a nickel auction minimum. My per-book cost is extremely paltry, but not quite a nickel. I guess the reason I like to auction the book, rather than give it away, is that a buyer, however insignificant the sum, has given a solid indicia of wanting something. Like most mediocre creators of art, my own greatest fear is burdening someone with an obligation to say thank you for something they don't want. Once I ran a Dutch (multi-item) ebay auction for my book, with an auction minimum of one penny, touting it as The Worst Chess Book You'll Ever Own, drafted in the style of a Ronco or QVC spot. The books all sold, at a penny each (don't scoff--that's SEVEN CENTS, and at 12 percent interest on the stock market, that would be worth 1.08 in only 48 years) and I loved that much of the feedback said "Book was EXACTLY as advertised".
Ah, capitalism...I felt good when my first print run became "profitable", even when the profit was roughly twenty dollars for the whole run.
Is art like the Mr. Micawber tag in David Copperfield...."income twenty pounds, outgo nineteen pounds seven shillings, result: domestic bliss, but income twenty pounds, outgo, twenty pounds seven shillings, domestic misery" Result: the difference between bliss and misery is about a pound.
When I spent a summer in London, the folks at the school cafeteria would give you a pound coupon
in lieu of a hot meal. A pound coupon would buy a samosa, a scotch egg, some little golf chocolates, and a world of other things.
That pound was bliss--continual self-judgment is the only real misery.
I am very attracted to the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer's concept of "cheap grace". Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves, that little self-assurance that our flaws are really okay, and that the odd paths we know we shouldn't be pursuing will somehow save us. We should all try to weed out the cheap grace in our gardens and try to plant useful things like marigolds or mint. But I think that Pastor B. missed a key point--hesitant as i am to take on xtian martyrs. There is also "cheap damnation". This is the inner voice which says "you're not a writer", or "if it doesn't make money, it's not worth doing" or even "what's the point of *this*". I think we all have far too much to do to spend so much time sentencing ourselves to petit hells. Then again, perhaps hell is 30 boxes in a cool new office, and no way to put the things in an ordered way.
In Heaven, they give you kool-aid and your desk is always neat and seraphic.
but the devil in the details of this sort of thing keeps taking my soul, and I don't even get Helen of Troy or incalculable riches in exchange; perhaps some more mundane trade was elaborated
on my credit card application.
I am eager to see the world in my little suburb and edge of the suburbs area. I need a strong dose of butterfly, bird, tree and flower.
I also need a diet Coke, but that sentiment deserves its own sentence, since "one of these things is not like the other".
In a downturn in my personal self-satire, my little poetry book failed to sell in 2 straight auctions. This is not surprising, since its time is really the xmas season, when people impulse buy things and are willing to check out a simple
bit of humor. Surprisingly,though, rather than do what I have done before--pull it from auction for a few months--I've put it up at a nickel auction minimum. My per-book cost is extremely paltry, but not quite a nickel. I guess the reason I like to auction the book, rather than give it away, is that a buyer, however insignificant the sum, has given a solid indicia of wanting something. Like most mediocre creators of art, my own greatest fear is burdening someone with an obligation to say thank you for something they don't want. Once I ran a Dutch (multi-item) ebay auction for my book, with an auction minimum of one penny, touting it as The Worst Chess Book You'll Ever Own, drafted in the style of a Ronco or QVC spot. The books all sold, at a penny each (don't scoff--that's SEVEN CENTS, and at 12 percent interest on the stock market, that would be worth 1.08 in only 48 years) and I loved that much of the feedback said "Book was EXACTLY as advertised".
Ah, capitalism...I felt good when my first print run became "profitable", even when the profit was roughly twenty dollars for the whole run.
Is art like the Mr. Micawber tag in David Copperfield...."income twenty pounds, outgo nineteen pounds seven shillings, result: domestic bliss, but income twenty pounds, outgo, twenty pounds seven shillings, domestic misery" Result: the difference between bliss and misery is about a pound.
When I spent a summer in London, the folks at the school cafeteria would give you a pound coupon
in lieu of a hot meal. A pound coupon would buy a samosa, a scotch egg, some little golf chocolates, and a world of other things.
That pound was bliss--continual self-judgment is the only real misery.
I am very attracted to the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer's concept of "cheap grace". Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves, that little self-assurance that our flaws are really okay, and that the odd paths we know we shouldn't be pursuing will somehow save us. We should all try to weed out the cheap grace in our gardens and try to plant useful things like marigolds or mint. But I think that Pastor B. missed a key point--hesitant as i am to take on xtian martyrs. There is also "cheap damnation". This is the inner voice which says "you're not a writer", or "if it doesn't make money, it's not worth doing" or even "what's the point of *this*". I think we all have far too much to do to spend so much time sentencing ourselves to petit hells. Then again, perhaps hell is 30 boxes in a cool new office, and no way to put the things in an ordered way.
In Heaven, they give you kool-aid and your desk is always neat and seraphic.
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Re: I like that red book
Date: 2002-05-19 06:36 am (UTC)While a McDonald's manager pretends only to sell me 3 sausage biscuits, the gallery owner pretends to be selling the Experience of art. In fact, they are only selling "what will sell" to "who can buy". I don't so much want to disagree with your point, as to say that I feel about them as I feel about major record labels and even, to a lesser extent, film companies. They are merely in business, extracting the most favorable terms from artists, selling to consumers at the highest profit. When art critics write articles which glorify this rather "glorified frame shop" capitalism, I want to run for the hills. At least at a "real" frame shop, one gets a decent frame for the trouble. In an art gallery, the gallery owner is a participant in a system in which essentially nobody wins. It's the model that's at fault, IMHWO.
When the artist and the gallery owner must "make a living" at it,
then too much economic pressure is put on the system. If the artist had a "day job", and the gallery were based on making space available for display only, without the trappings, then we'd see better art, more art, more consumer participation in buying art, and altogether less pretense.
I have a reaction similar to my feeling about record labels.
Let's take one of our Texas acts as an exemplar. A pop folkie named Sara Hickman is ambrosia personified in concert.
She put out an incredible indie album on a local Denton (our north Texas jazz center) label. It was a great first effort, and she could gig anywhere in this area to adoring audiences. Then she signed with a major record label. They immediately tried to convert her into an "easy listening" (adult oriented, I think they call it) act, departing from her folk roots. They tried to glamorize her up a bit, and her arrangements went from a spare guitar to lightweight stringy stuff. When she was dropped from their list, she had to pay them money to buy back her masters.
I read article after article about how Sara had been "done wrong" by the "big record label". But you know, I think by the 1990s,the "word was out". Record labels want to make money off the backs of
artists. They distort sounds. They change careers. Sometimes it works. More times it fails. Their contracts are "fine print forms".
I don't know Sara Hickman, and I still admire her work. But
I'm not going to cry for the Argentina of ambition and
signing adhesive contracts. The word is out. They're out to make good money. They take away your independence. They don't care. In LA style, they tell you they love you, and then
never call. I have to see art galleries in the same way.
That's why I think direct outlet marketing is it.
I was amused when I talked to a co worker's sister some time ago.
She was a researcher at UC Berkeley. She was thinking about changing jobs. I asked her if she ever considered going into
industry. She said she had thought about it....but she heard those companies actually want to *make a profit*.
I buy a lot of major label records, but I'd rather listen to an indie CD nowadays of heart felt stuff than a record packaged label.
The analogy is imperfect, but surely teenytheaters.com is the equivalent of that small indie label. If profit becomes what you ultimately want from it, I'm sure you can find it, too.
Re: I like that red book
Date: 2002-05-19 07:17 am (UTC)I've always had a day job until recently when I've been too ill to maintain one. And the only artistic venture that ever gave me monetary satisfaction was the business I created myself--Mars Tokyo Rubber Stamps (http://www.adornedsurfce.com/)
I wholeheartedly agree that the most satisfaction comes from one's own enterprise. With the least amount of outside interference.
Re: I like that red book
Date: 2002-05-19 01:01 pm (UTC)my friend Ken Mora (http:\\www.kenmora.com) being a web design guy in his day job, and folks like you being a graphic designer.
Similarly, so many writers day job as teachers, as attorneys, and as folks in service professions.
Of course, I respect folks who work at Wal Mart or weld or what have you. I like in that Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed, where she took "lower wage" jobs, she found a world filled of artists and writers.
I hate to make a point fifty times, but I'll still say that I don't think that Doubleday Books or galleries in NY or Exquisite Corpse ezine should decide whose voices are heard.
Cutting against my point is the time I looked at the trafford.com publish on demand authors' catalog. I am a firm believer in tolerance of every faith, but it is still somehow imperfect for my theory that so many books were new age tomes on self-help. I enjoy a good new age tome on self-help, but I'd have to think that more voices are out there in the literary climate.
The 'net, the copy shop, the print on demand, the art fair, the flea market...it's that
which will cause the interconnection, and yes, if that means that folks will have to paint on Saturdays and weld on Monday through Friday, that's what it will mean, but I'll still
respectfully submit that this beats the alternative of having a Borgia for a patron.
Re: I like that red book
Date: 2002-05-19 01:27 pm (UTC)First off: because they have a PC with Print shop or some other piece of PC garbage, everyone thinks they're a graphic artist. Everyone sees how easy it is to change a font or a size and BAMMO suddenly they're as much of a designer as you are-- who's spent their whole career doing it, was trained and educated in visual art, and also just happened to have a natural gift as well.
Second: Because they *think* they know how to do this-- everyone is a critic. No longer do you submit something and have them say-- Gee that's a nice job, I sure couldn't have come up with something like that. No, NOW you have, HMMMMMMMMMMM let me take this by Joe because his little girl likes to play around with their computer at home, let's see what she thinks.... OR you get--- hmmmmmm what if we changed made that type there 2 pts smaller... and put this over THERE, and blah blah blah-- in otherwords-- they really LIKE doing your job for you. The rub is, they have NO visual sense or education or natural gift and their ideas STINK and ruin the piece which you somehow have to take credit for. There goes anything you can put in your portfolio. Not to mention what it does to your self-esteem or sense of worth.
I really wish people understood the damage they did to truly creative people when they get into this *let's pretend I'm as creative as YOU are* mode of thinking. But they don't. They just go on feeling like all's right with their world. Because it is--- they just ruined someone elses.