Despite my saint-like patience, there is one type of individual who prompts me to suck air through my teeth like a vacuum, narrow my eyes like Wile E. Coyote and grimace so badly that not even a tube of Botox, let alone a syringe, would restore me: The Deluded Moron.
Deluded Morons should not be mistaken for Staunch Optimists, even though I concede that under the right lighting they look like one and the same. But no, I am thinking of The Deluded Moron proper, man or woman, who knows jack shit about the creative process yet operates under the misguided assumption that talent (his or her own, of course) shall eventually prevail. Sometimes these people slightly irritate me, other times they amuse me, annoy me or baffle me; others still they piss me off like I never knew I could be pissed off by anything or anyone.
I have developed such a visceral response to them because there is nothing, and I repeat, nothing, that your experience, your good-will, your efforts or even your piece of paper* can do to get this nuisance to face things-as-they-are, otherwise referred to as reality.
One such guy wrote to me the other day, seconds after my first post went up. He was enquiring, in very short and very certain terms, about my choice of reading matter, which is for all of you to see on the left under the GOOD TO KNOW heading. Said guy did not see a connection between books about writing and books about drawing (I did not say there was any, mind you) and even less inclined was he to see a connection between Hugh MacLeod's Ignore Everybody and every other single text I listed on here.
See what I mean? Deluded Morons do not need me or you or anyone; they can embarass themselves tenfold without any help whatsoever. Just for you, dear disgruntled reader, here is the reason why I included, and I hope that my quoting you will give you a frisson of excitement around about now, 'that piece of pompuous rubbish'.
Ignore Everybody is a no-nonsense, cut-the-crap guide to life spent on one's own creative wings, flying high above a minefield punctured by the carcasses of corporate gits, time-wasters, nay-sayers and, yes, deluded morons. How can such a delicious little book annoy the deluded ones so profoundly? Because, while its heart pulsates with hopefulness and its soul remains focused and upbeat, Ignore Everybody is a revelation of apocalyptic proportions for all pseudo-artists out there who have no guts to inform themselves and for whom foretold is not forearmed but foreshocked and forepissedinmypants.
Consider what the author says under the heading 'Put the hours in'. It may seem obvious to suggest that whoever is more successful than you may be, not simply more talented, but more focused on the task at hand. In other words, he may be burning the midnight oil while you are sound asleep after having spent your entire evening zoned out in front of programmes you did not even care to watch. However, there is greater depth to it which is uncovered by one basic concept often at odds with our romanticised views of what artists do or how they live and where our jobs fit within the artistic landscape of our dreams: don't quit your day job.
Hugh writes: 'Stamina is utterly important. And stamina is only possible if it's managed well. People think all they need to do is endure one crazy, intense, job-free creative burst and their dreams will come true. They are wrong, they are stupidly wrong.'
This idea that you will succeed only under the rosiest projections, when your house needs no further maintenance, your family does not nag you, your bank account bursts at the seams, the planets are in alignment, you write with the Cartier pen and you have lost twenty pounds, is the product of your own intellectual masturbation that has ejaculated an artificially auspicious situation. It has even managed to re-write history on the basis of fabricated determinism. Like this:
Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel! It was his job! That's all he had to do! He finished in four years! Of course he did! He didn't have to deal with the plumber like I have! He didn't have my kids to look after! He didn't have to worry about a huge mortgage! He didn't have to do the ironing! He didn't have to go to the supermarket! He had no distractions! Of course he made it!
But wait a minute. Michelangelo was a sculptor, not a painter. In fact, he detested painting and famously wrote in a letter to Benedetto Varchi in 1547, 'Sculpture is the torch by which painting is illuminated'. He felt bitter, dejected and inadequate about the Sistine Chapel commission: 'This is not my profession, I am wasting my time, and all for nothing. May God help me!'. God did help, but I like to think that it wasn't just God's hand that was guiding Michelangelo's; neither do I think that it was all down to his immense talent. Michelangelo had stamina, focus, mind and made virtue of necessity.
When you think that you could not possibly sit down at your desk after a nine-hour stint at the office to make a start on your book, please spare a thought for the man who painted for months whilst feeling the nape of his neck on his hump, his breast bent like a harpy's, unable to see where to put his feet, and his face made a richly decorated floor by the dripping of his brush.** The difference between those who succeed and those who don't is down to staying on the task always, no matter what. It's stamina that sees the artist from preoccupied beginning to triumphant end.
Quitting the day job presents another issue that Deluded Morons ignore: the lack of money. Unless you can live off a trust fund or are married to a squillionaire, chances are you will need to support yourself. Quite frankly, if anyone at all can show me the great work of art of a trust fund kid or equivalent, I will eat this table and everything on it.*** This does not mean that you must starve in order to produce great art (although it worked for Van Gogh and many others); it means that you will not be able to produce anything at all if you have got children to feed and bailiffs at the door or any permutation of this scenario on the Financial Hardship scale. We do not live in Victorian times any longer; we produce very little when we are stressed out of our wits. Those who think that the lack of money will be resolved by jumping on whatever fashionable bandwagon are mistaken.
This brings me to Hugh's point about avoiding crowds altogether:
'Call him Ted. A young kid in a big city, just off the bus, wanting to be a famous something: artist, writer, musician, film director, whatever. He's full of fire, full of passion, full of ideas. And you meet Ted again five or ten years later, and he's still tending bar at the same restaurant. He's not a kid anymore. But he's still no closer to his dream. His voice is still as defiant as ever, certainly, but there's an emptiness to his words that wasn't there before.
Yeah, well, Ted probably chose a very well-trodden path. Write novel, be discovered, publish bestseller, sell movie rights, retire rich in five years. Or whatever. No worries that there's probably three million other novelists/actors/musicians/painters with the same plan. But of course, Ted's special. Of course his fortune will defy all the odds eventually. Of course. That's what he keeps telling you, as he refills your glass.'
Ted is a Deluded Moron and the creative landscape is full of them. My gentle, or often not-gentle-at-all, words do not dent his convictions. They do not even scratch the surface, for the Deluded Moron has retired to a nuclear bunker where I, Hugh or anyone cannot penetrate. Eventually, only Bitterness and Disenchantment will seep through the cracks, many, many years down the line, when Ted will be too tired, too old, too wounded, too cynical, too poor, too emotionally scarred to do something about it.
You do not have to be Ted or any variation of him. You have a powerful weapon at hand, a book that may be small but has a great spine, a book that shines a spotlight on all of the pitfalls but that then encourages you to go ahead and navigate them, radar pulsating on your head, eyes peeled, heart singing. Because you know what they say... if you accept the pain, it cannot hurt you.
*If you still have it and haven't used it in the bathroom some time ago, when you snapped out of your own deluded state, of course.
**Not my flights of literary fancy, but Michelangelo's own words (Tailed sonnet for Giovanni da Pistoia) from Michelangelo by Gilles Néret (London: Taschen, 2004), pp. 23-5.
***See Hugh's own take on this point, under 'The more talented somebody is, the less they need the props'.
Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with Hugh MacLeod and I do not know him, although I have sent him the occasional tweet. Of course, I cannot claim to know anyone by tweet tweet, no more than I can call myself a pâtissier by virtue of baking the occasional tray of brownies, no?
Your post may not have kicked Deluded Moron up the proverbial butt, but for the rest of us, Thanks.
Gxx
Posted by: Alena | 05 February 2010 at 23:02
This was all very well said and I think would Hugh would approve.
Posted by: Lily | 08 February 2010 at 13:23