Tuesday, August 27, 2013

worries on the brain

A brief overview of things that have been knocking around my brain:



- The increasing fear that it's just not possible to do everything I want to do and be good at it all. I don't have enough time or drive or energy (one or all, have not yet determined exact cause of unsuccess). Plus I want to have a "life". I want to have time to take trips or relax without feeling guilty about not making things. You can't make anything if you have no life experience... right? Or is that just another aphorism spun up by THE MAN so we'll buy plane tickets and splurge on vacations and theme park tickets and dig ourselves deeper into consumption?!?!?




- Art, good art, the disgustingly corrupt market-driven nature of the art world as it currently exists. I don't really want to be part of that world, but I want to make art, but now even the word "art" rubs me the wrong way, lofty and exclusive as it is. I got back into watching anime this summer (hah) and when I finished Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood I just loafed on my bed and cried because that series made me feel more feelings than any piece of "art" I've viewed or experienced in recent memory. Why aren't television or anime exalted the way art is if it cuts me to the core so much more deeply than the muted appreciation of a painting or the cerebral contemplation of most digital art? Same with comics-- the directness of the narrative makes me feel things that stick with me for days or months or years. It almost seems like naked emotion is a marker of "lower" forms of creativity. Oh, it makes you feel? Like REALLY feel? Well, that's not what real art does. That's what soap operas do. Feelings are for women. Real art is stoicism, detachment, feeling in a shell of intellectual code, minimalism; instead of distracting you with immediate emotions, it makes you ask the "real" questions, supposedly. But I feel like that's becoming increasingly obsolete, if it was ever an effective operating philosophy to begin with. Did people ever really appreciate minimalism that deeply, or did they just act like they did because they felt like they had to...? Not saying they didn't, but I wonder, just how deeply is the hierarchy of "good" vs "bad" art infused with what people thought they should be doing/thinking rather than what they actually wanted?



- I only realized this recently and it took a roundabout route that has taken like 21 years but the idea that you should be able to create your art in isolation without ever caring about attention or what others think is bullshit. I mean, it's good if you CAN do that, but it doesn't make you a fraud if you don't feel that way, because if art doesn't reach anyone, then it might as well not exist, because a large part of the point is to make an impact on others right? So besides the enjoyment the creator derives from the process, it's useless if it goes nowhere. I've felt really conflicted about self-promotion because I don't like to promote myself lest people think I'm very self-important since art is so closely tied to the ego of the creator oftentimes. And I still don't like to use facebook to promote because god facebook just makes me so mad (but I still use it........haha) but I don't know how to get people to care so that's a pretty looming issue at the moment. Of course I see the reason why we convince ourselves that no one else's opinion matters, because sometimes I'll stop in the middle and lose motivation and think "there's no fucking point because no one is going to look at it". So I guess I just have to find a balance of self-delusion that I can sustain.



- Why are people such jerks about attribution on tumblr? I feel like it isn't just laziness or ignorance but purposeful omission at this point. Thankfully there are a ton of artists on tumblr who help to counteract this trend, but sometimes it almost feels like the further the artwork is away from its creator, the more value/desirability it has to tumblr-users. It's not as good unless it exists as this almost platonic ideal of creativity and art, cut off from the reality of its creator or the creator's comments/description. I guess it also has to do with the way people consume art on tumblr because not only do they have to like it, they have to be willing to associate themselves (their blogs as themselves) with that art by reblogging it or ACTUALLY "liking" it. Reblogging art is commitment and only certain types of art really go over well on tumblr because those are the things that more people are willing to associate themselves with, to subsume into their BLOGZ. Tumblr is like Tetsuo in Akira, you just absorb all the stuff into yourself. And that's a very particular type of appreciation.



- And I have more stupid worries but wow that's enough for now here are some outfit gifs:



^ Those shoes are dead. The right sole snapped in half. URBAN OUTFITTERS QUALITY.



Reminds me of the matrix with little skaters glitching in and out of existence.
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