On Being An Artist (or: How to be a creative person in a prefab world)

What is an artist? Creative? Intuitive? Weird. Outside the box. What box? Outside of my own box. Raconteur? That sounds “rakish” but it really just means “storyteller.” We’re telling our stories and we must be arrogant enough to believe enough other people will relate to them for us to make a living at it. Freaks and hippies? Rejects? Empaths? Sociopaths? Off the beaten path? Or just beaten.

Everyone creates. Every thought, every sentence is a unique creation of the person it comes from. Even if you repeat something, it still has a different inflection or reason for being said this time. But many people create theirs to fit into something. But even if you’re trying not to fit into something, that’s still trying to fit out of something else. Pro anti. If you’re anti anti, you’re pro status quo. Quid pro quo – money for nothing.

My dad is a compulsive obsessive freak. (As if he was a thing isolated from the past or the future. He got it from somewhere, and so did I. I guess it runs in the family, like some sort of reverse engineering. P.S. he and my grandfather were both engineers, and i started college in that.) My problem is being unable to multitask. I say this over and over and still can’t figure out what’s underneath it all. Once I get into something I can’t just get out of it, put it down or go take up something else – well I can if the whim strikes me, but I can’t just plan it, damn it:

8:00-6:00pm – work all day at dreadful “day job” (this includes going to bed and waking up, eat/floss/brush/shit/shave/shower/dry/dress/bus yourself to fit their time frame, your whole day is affucted by this).
6:00-7:00 – work out (once a week, if i have enough energy  ? )
7:00-7:01 – pay bills (with what?)
7:01-7:45 – do art
7:45-8:00 – call Mommy
8:00-10:00 – watch T.V.
10:00-11:00 – write angry letter to lying politicians
11:00-11:01 – masturbate
11:00pm-6:00am – stay up all night playing “minesweeper”
6:00-8:00am – wonder why i can’t sleep

What? “Do art”? I can’t just PLAN it. If I’m in the middle of a heart operation and I think of lyrics for a song, I have to stop and write it down. That way if i die, at least something good came out of me. They say you can’t stay emotionally attached to your work, or else it becomes too personal. But how is it NOT personal? I don’t think I can live with being emotionally detached from everything. I’ve lived too long the other way. How boring that would be! And what would I suck at to replenish my bloody self-esteem? Here’s a good motto: Don’t suck – put out. Better to spew than hoard. Because you can’t take it with you. I’d rather choke on my own vomit than be buried under a pile of newspapers and magazines i’ll never read, because at least i was trying to get it out, to express the contents of my stomach in a shout of colors. A backwards hit, a spew of acid.

So how do we do it? The thing is it’s not just the creative part. To find your own business you also have to know accounting, business and be a good networker and salesperson (whore) among other things, such as janitor. Because who else can you afford to clean up your mess? It takes a special person to be able to do all that. Plus you have to: know what you want at some point (even if it takes you 38 years), have the confidence in yourself that you can do it, know how to do it; and there are certain elements of timing and luck (fortuitousness? I guess that means the same thing.) that may have to occur as well. Plus you have to be emotionally stable enough to deal with other people once in awhile. As the Mr. T Experience point out from the name of that movie: even Hitler had a girlfriend. But if you’re too stable, you’re no artist. Just ask Picasso or Van Gogh. Or are you?

Or if you get lucky you can marry a guy like Michael Douglas, who knows people and can get you started. I preferred to just do drugs until i made it big, but that didn’t work i just got older. If wishes were horses there wouldn’t be a shovel big enough. Trust me, i tried. Live. Die. And if you’re lucky you can get laid once or twice in between. But not if you don’t have any money. Or tattoos. Because only the lonely don’t get laid.

Bertrand Russell said the problem with the world is that the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. That’s why the creative need to shout it out loud. Because the old way isn’t working. Like Jesus, we need to turn everything on its head.