Category: ART

I WRITE TO REMEMBER

From my People & Blogs interview with Manuel Moreale:

Given your experience, if you were to start a blog today, would you do anything differently?

Honestly, no. WordPress and the hosting and such works fine for me. I don’t care much about the name, or the theme, or whatever. The blog is 100% for me.

“I write to remember,” as the lyrics go in ‘One Armed Scissor’ by At the Drive In.

Read the rest here.

SURFACE AREA

There’s the saying to increase the surface area for luck, but I’m telling you… meeting new folks increases the surface area for COOL STUFF.

I just got off a Zoom call with some great folks and met Andrew White and I want him to take photos of me running up the hills I try to run up (just kidding, I’d look awful), and also discovered Andrew(?) Byrd who is running an analog recording competition – making and recording music with no computers!

I know, I know… the surface area thing… for networking, for finding jobs, yes, sure. Of course. But wow, there are just so many amazing people out there doing great work.

MAGIC AND MACHINERY

You can have the magic, but you need a little machinery to make it go. It’s still magic, and it’s a gift to the world.

But you can have all the machinery in the world, but without any magic, well… what good is any of it?

Strategy and tactics… you can learn those.

That’s what I always tell my super talented clients. The ones who’ve been making magic for decades. Pro mountain bikers. Musicians. Painters.

The hard work is already done! Try being magical at any of those with one course, or email drip sequence, right? You can’t.

But add a little bit of machinery to the mix. A well thought out email sign up page (one that doesn’t just say “sign up for updates”).

A plan for sending out a newsletter, and not just “whenever.”

An idea how to frame the magic around the business side of things, without just posting images of products with BUY NOW buttons.

Magic and machinery… good to have both, but if I had to pick just one I’d take the magic.

IT’S EMBARRASSING TO POST THINGS ON THE INTERNET NOW

From Noah Kalina:

I was out taking pictures and I made a picture that I really like. I was working on it and I was like, “This is so good.” And I was like, “What am I going to do with this?”

My natural inclination is to want to post it on the internet, but why? I almost feel like it’s embarrassing to post things on the internet now.

More thoughts here.

TALKING ABOUT THE WORK

“Talking about the work is just as important as making it“

Lots of truth in this statement, not just in a big “PR SALES!” sense, but even in how we talk about what we do with friends, and other people in our creative orbit.

Many artists would love for the “art to speak for itself,” but that’s not the world we live in anymore. There is simply too much art, music, news, drama – EVERYTHING – for things to speak for themselves.

Everything has its volume cranked to 11, and it never ends, and there’s more being added every minute, every hour, every day.

We get better at talking about the work by talking about it, not by trying to scream just as loud as everyone else.

Posting on social media can be like screaming, since we all have to scream to get attention on those platforms. We have to dance, or use the right trending audio, or hashtags.

Talking, though, is a lost art. How many people do you know that don’t even like talking on the phone with friends? Let alone creative directors, or booking people, or potential clients?

Talking is a lost fucking art, but it’s exactly what we need to get back to.

LIFE IS TENSION

To be alive is fraught with tension – a delicate balance of having your shit together and being moments away from everything falling over the rails.

People talk about the “hot new thing” because of tension. Taylor Swift has a big tour. Great! I’d love to go. Tickets are $1000, and the nearest tour stop is five hours away. That’s tension.

There’s no tension in posting a song on Spotify or uploading a video to YouTube. That’s the easy part. Telling someone, “I posted a new single on Spotify,” is easy. An AI bot could write that. No tension.

Time to up the ante. Send the link to only ten people, and then see what happens. Show your next film or gallery with only a cryptic map to a secret underground venue under the local college water tower. Limit the number of people that can attend your next Zoom meeting.

When everything is available for everyone, there’s little incentive to pay attention; it’ll be here tomorrow, digitally or available to purchase on Amazon.

YOUR ART NEEDS MORE OF YOUR ART

I believe a few things in my line of work:

Let people know what you’re doing.

By this, I mean when you have a new song, exhibit, drawing, or idea, you should share it with your audience or your fans.

Like Rick Rubin says, “make stuff, and show it to your friends.”

Let people know what you’re doing in a way that is as creative as the work itself.

Established artists can send out a flyer with a BUY NOW button because they have the luxury of being established artists.

Radiohead and Beyonce can drop a surprise album because they’re Radiohead and Beyonce.

You’re not Radiohead or Beyonce.

Posting “here’s my new thing” and a link gets lost in the river of content, because everyone posts “here’s my new thing” every hour of the day, week after week, year after year.

“Meritocracy is a myth,” says Delon Om. “I always believed that my art would speak for itself- that its merit would earn recognition and validation. Unfortunately, I have learned that is not the case.”

It’s never been easier to distribute your work and get it seen by a million people by lunchtime, but because everyone can do that, it’s also never been harder.

This video from Noah Kalina documents how he captured a photo and made it into a print, which sold out in a few hours. To my knowledge, he only mentioned this offering in his video, which “only” got about 900 views in a month, but his work doesn’t just speak for itself. His work is the work, and his art is the art. It’s all Noah Kalina.

He didn’t just post “new print for sale” on his Instagram Threads and call it a day.

He spent many hours making that art and told his friends about it in a 100% Noah Kalina way.

Bobby Hundreds doesn’t need to write 500+ word newsletters, he’s Bobby Hundreds! He could easily get away with posting his random thoughts and links to new endeavors. But I imagine someone like Bobby has so much creativity coursing through his veins that he’s compelled to share more about the big things he’s doing.

QUESTION: How can your creative spirit inform how you tell your friends about your work?