“The reason that art (writing, engaging, leading, all of it) is valuable is precisely why I can’t tell you how to do it. If there were a map, there’d be no art, because art is the act of navigating without a map.”
If you want a guarantee, buy a hammer.
Stop looking for tricks. There is no shortcut. There’s no “one size fits all.”
Make a painting, a photograph, a sad song, teach a course, call an old friend, dance like no one’s watching, cuz no one cares more than you do, so you might as well get to it.
“For some reason, the American mindset is endless growth. Everything must get bigger, everything must get better, and more, more, more, how do you like it, how do you like it. But the truth of the matter is, nothing natural undergoes infinite growth, other than some cancers.”
Like I started thinking about in 2008 and 2009, when running a music blog for AOL Music, “it’s like driving full speed up a mountain that doesn’t end, with two bosses in the back seat telling you to go faster.”
Growth or else. Cut writers, cut budget, but keep growing at 10% month after month. Be it traffic, or subscribers, or units sold, if you’re not growing, you’re dying.
There are so many distractions, so many shiny objects to chase. A splash of inspiration came way this morning, but had a good grounding call this afternoon to set me straight, a reminder to stay true to my own mission and style.
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?
All the hours spent on social media over the last several years – it stings. Hours I could have spent walking around town with a camera, or just sitting on a bench thinking about nothing.
Nothing, space, the void. Right now these are the most important items on my daily to-do list. Mind you, this doesn’t mean I spend 75% of my day in meditation, or staring at the walls while ignoring my cat, or my work stuff. I just mean capturing moments of nothing / space / the void when I can get it.
This means hour long runs with no music. Walks around town when I’ve completed work tasks. Leaving my phone outside of the kitchen when I’m making and eating lunch.
The goal each day is to grab as much nothing as posslb.e
The more I think about the marketing machine, and the how and the why and the strategies involved, the more it all seems impossible.
Like, everyone who wants to “get the word out” about their thing is competing with a million other people doing the same thing. Some of it rises to the top because it’s what everyone is talking about – tech reviews, AI, sports, Star Wars, etc.
Other folks who do stuff that’s not quite as “big,” well, they’re lost in the fray, unless we’re talking about BookTok, of course.
But like, do “we” need to be in all these popular online places to make it? Is it required?
I think about the tiny Chinese restaurant I visit in Palmerton, PA. They’re not on social media, nor do they need to be. People in that town (or people passing through, like me) want Chinese food.
They have it. That’s a simple and direct choice.
And I feel like when you have that immediate want, say, for Chinese food, you’re going to look locally.
And if the grass is getting too high in your yard, you have to get someone to cut it.
But a lot of other things – how to draw, people who talk about email newsletters with creative people (that’s me!), how to write better… there are a zillion options for everything out there, and no real guarantee that any of them are going to help in the end.
Chinese food? That’s simple. You can solve that problem in an hour.
All the other creative / strategy / marketing stuff? Endless variations of possible solutions, directions, and options.
LinkedIn is awful, and for some reason I’m still on there, and they keep sending me emails. One today asked this, and I’ll answer it here, and not distribute it anywhere, thank you very much.
Q. How can you distribute content effectively across multiple platforms?
A. Don’t. Stop distributing content. Go for a walk instead. Talk to your neighbor. Read a fucking book. Take a picture. Knit a scarf. Learn karate. Ride a bike.
Everyone is distributing content. It’s all the same. We’re all taught to believe that if we just write enough “content,” and distribute it enough places, then we’ll be like Justin Beiber and someone will discover us and hire us and we’ll be rich.
I’m not saying it never happens, but come on – if everyone is doing this thing, and obviously it’s very easy to “distribute our content,” then why aren’t more people killing it?
If we’re all so smart, and all our friends are smart, then why aren’t we all over employed and speaking at big conferences?
There are only so many podcasts to appear on, to share our leading-edge thinking.
Do we think the people in positions to hire us are hanging out on LinkedIn all day? That they have the time to read everyone’s 500+ word posts about productivity and how AI will help the music industry?
“The internet makes me blind to the scale of things. If I write a blog post that is read by 2000 people that feels like crickets (these days). But last night we had 200 people come to the opening of a new exhibition at the gallery. It was overwhelming.”
As that CPM rate went down, more ads went on the page. Two display ads. Three. A pop-under.
It wasn’t that 2,000 people reading your work was bad. The CPM rate was “bad,” so something that got read by 20,000 people was considered “good.” After all, we have to keep the lights on!
The problem was, as more corporate interests crept in, we didn’t just need to keep the lights on. We had to pay the salaries of lots of dude bros in sports jackets and the electric bill for keeping 27 LED TVs running day and night in the office.
Listen to this quick clip with Scott Perry (of Creative On Purpose), where we talk about how best to spread your work in a way that feels comfortable for you, and to figure it out TOGETHER, with other people, rather than just trying to white-knuckle the perfect solution.
Thinking about a section of Austin Kleon’s “Show Your Work,” which is “You Can’t Fing Your Voice is You Don’t Uset it.”
We find it by using it. We find out photographic style by taking more photos, we find out guitar style by playing guitar, we find out our artist style by… by being ourselves and being present in the world, sharing what we do.
The chapter talks about the movie writer Roger Ebert, and how he lost his voice so he then found his voice through writing online.
For any lone artist in a small town, whos prime disadvantage is that they live in a small town, well, here was a movie critic who lost his voice – such a loss! Such a “disadvantage.”
Write, post, talk, discuss. Do it online, do it often, seek out your weirdos, and make sure you have a website where all your weirdness resides (like this blog).
