ned
What are you is a question that’s been spiraling around like the flu in November.
Who are you?
What makes you tick?
What identifies you as a person?
What makes you unique?
Why do these questions matter?
Perhaps it’s just me, in my endless quest for knowledge and insight into how other people have found their success that has kept me reading more and more about this, but I suspect that since it’s being written down on blogs and e-zines and all the other types of pages out there that it’s a hot topic right now and other people are reading the same things.
I think this search spawns from societies separation from religion. We’re now searching for our meaning and voice, our own one, not Gods. With religion the answer was always Jesus and God, but now society is finding they need a meaning in life, their own meaning. A reason to wake up in the morning and put on a fresh pair of undies and head out into the big ol’ scary world.
Do we need this? What is the alternative if we don’t?
My weekly/daily emails from Etsy have been giving me advice on art or creative business, stressing ones image. Some are very helpful. But, it’s not just from them I’ve been reading about ways to find my voice, what’s unique about me. I just watched Dave Grohl’s Keynote Address at this years (2013) SXSW, and most of his talk was about how he was left to his own devices his entire life to find his own voice, and sing it LOUD, starting in his punk roots. Truly an inspiring speech and very worth watching.
The trendy idea, from what I gather, is that if you’re not searching within yourself for creation, then what you begin to create is just blubbery, a cheating offspring of yourself and shaming your name in the art world. Thus, not creating art at all…. just pop.. Do you agree with this?
I don’t.
Mr. Brainwash of Exit Through the Gift Shop fame proved to the world that he indeed could be highly successful from combining a mixture of self and external voices, so did Andy Warhol and Tobias Wong. I guess the point of discussion then leads to what is a creation, what defines it.
We have been, and always will copy other people. It’s just the plain facts of the matter. None of us are isolated in a blank bubble our entire lives. Even if we were, we would naturally be inspired by the blank void of it all! To take from history, in Renaissance times artists were considered masters if they could very precisely make duplications of their masters works of art. But no, we’ve moved much further beyond that with help from such masters like Duchamp, Picasso, Cezanne. Some scholars argue that these masters direction in art away from realistic representations, towards a representation of how the artist saw the world. This was spurred by the photograph that could now take fairly accurate images of the world.
I am entirely aligned with these artists about creating art. That the art must come from within, that it must come from what you uniquely see about the world or that which you’re depicting in the art. I also think that there are so many beautiful and amazing things happening in this world that we should take inspiration from these external events in this world as well.
There are two sides to every coin. The world is not that simple. There is always a fork in the road. As a hockey player, you play games and you practice. As a Doctor, you work on patients and you review anatomy books. As an artist, you create and sell your art. Perhaps not all artists do this, as some are lucky enough to have a publicist, a promoter, a PR agency, a manager, an illustrator, an accountant…. a wife… but this, ladies and gentlemen, is an opportunity for grassroots at its finest.
We have available to us all the tools we need to do everything we want. I stand by this to the end. Sometimes things get overwhelming to a point of distraction, but this is where professionals are seperated from the amateurs. Perhaps these are my punk roots showing. I like to think this attitude spawned from watching Mel Gibson in Road Warrior, or Kevin Costner in Waterworld. They had all they needed to survive, right on their backs. Ha! Maybe it just spawned from my adaptation of all things electronic…
The beautiful thing about our modern world now is that we really do have all the tools. Sure, there were tape decks back in the day, but now we have full condenser mics and USB mixers, laptops, DSLR cameras with video, and internet. We have Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud, Tumblr, Pinterest, and our own websites! To makea website now all you need is a computer, a user name, and a bit of time. This should essentially make it impossible for most people to be stuck in the just talking about it stage, to the doing it stage. Now we have the opportunity to reach houndreds, thousands, and if you’re lucky, millions of people. How’s that for stepping up productions in your fan-zine?
I believe this time we live in is a time for us to stand up and wear the chief headdress. This is where we shift away from sub-contracting out our services and take full control of everything.
But, this is me, this is my voice. This is what I believe in today and until somebody has a much more brilliant plan and way of life for me to live by, I’m sticking to it.