I've been quietly reading you for a while. This one hit me at home, as it were. You toiled in newspapers, I toiled in advertising.
I've always had an intuitive sense of spatial relationships. How disparate objects can fit harmoniously into a space. Moving into a new apartment or a new house, without measuring, I know exactly how the furniture, etc would fit in each room. Used to piss my ex wife off to no end (she'd make me place everything wrongly and within about two weeks everything would end up where I said it should be the first time I saw the space). This sent me down a designer road, first as a graphic designer, then as an art director, then creative director.
But there was a problem, I'm a great visual designer but when I'd be partnered within a copywriter, about 80% of the time, I'd "get" what we were doing first and come up with the headline and often the copy. This got me labeled as difficult to work with. Copywriters are used to being top dogs on creative teams and they don't like it when they the art guy is, maybe not better, but faster conceptually than they are and has a better handle on strategy.
So they'd do the only logical thing, they'd tear me down. The agency also did the only logical thing, they promoted me because my work was very effective. But I was a freak because none of the traditional labels really fit.
One thing you learn when you go freelance or start your own shop (and I did both) is that you can do great work for other people all day long — but doing the same thing for yourself, god help you...
I've never started an actual Substack, but people seem to like what I've written in notes. There's that self promotion thing again. I'm happy and enjoy reacting to other people's writing, but can't bring myself to do the same.
Reading through the comments, some people seem to be confused about why other writers might not help promote the truly gifted — and it's just one ugly aspect of human nature, people tend to be jealous and envious of someone that they can see doing the thing that they love better than they can do it. Just like the copywriters I worked with.
I'm impressed with your clear eyed confidence in being your own impresario. That takes a lot of strength and cojones.
And now I'm just going to go ahead and restack you. This a hard bitter piece of tough love that a lot of people here could really use.
I really hope that they'll read it.
Oh, and you look fantastic in that photo and the Photoshop jock in me can tell that any retouching was extremely minimal.
I feel things can change through collectivism. There is power in numbers. The problem with todays creators is that we are going at it alone, and we shouldn't. We need to be collectively critiquing each others work, promoting each other, and showing/publishing together.
The rant you did about magats and libtards was raw and meaty. That 75/25 part is fun. And ..one last time before the summer ends.. Oh baby. I liked the article. This one I can comment.
Haven't heard in a while? I have never heard the term impresario. Maybe I've been under a rock, or I have never tried to be an 'artist'. I guess I know what an impresario is now. Love your art, won't you love it as well. I do it for you, and for me. You are wonderful, here is my world, can you see the depth, the pain, the sorrow and the tears, the hopes, the transformations, the tragedy and the triumph. No!? A one liner gets the prize, sweetie. A picture is a thousand words, where 400 is a stretch. Guess who wins. Tough shit. Now go back and cry some more blood.
Maybe, just maybe, I'll read your art now.
Knowing how the art world worked? How any world worked has been made visible with all the psyops. It appears that we all have to be our own impresarios now, it has always been that way, whether we like it or not, I suppose. That would be a me too. I'm both artist and impresario now. (Impresario only to a few though). Does that mean you would marry me? Add a hot bisexual girlfriend and that would be five X chromosomes to one Y. That seems a bit uneven. I believe that Y could put on a show, if inclined, but I don't count on it. You look good all dolled up, a work of art, if I may say. I can imagine you would look much better with wet hair, no makeup, and staring into this world, and I into that world.
Thank you! I have two serialised novels available for free on this very site! An impresario is a 20th c concept, I guess… they used to promote artists, before social media, so the artist could actually work on their art.
Now they promote themselves, and we have the landscape you behold.
THAT'S why I'm not famous and no one shares my work. I was starting to get nervous it was me.
Joking aside, I have wondered about this point you're making. But how can you tell it's you or everyone else? Sour grapes are easy enough to ignore, after you can't get them, but were they really sour or am I just not able to reach them? How can I tell if I'm as good as you're implying, so good, in fact, that everyone is jealously holding me back by not sharing my work, or if I'm just basic and mediocre and nobody really cares? I can't seem to be able to promote myself and I can't get published anywhere, and nobody in charge (editors, publishers, etc.) seems to care about my work at all, as I'm not even worth a response. So what I've come to is, I'm either very good, and all that you're saying about artists applies to me, or I'm very mediocre and no one shares or promotes my work or publishes me because my writing doesnt appeal to any audience. And not knowing sucks, especially when there's no way for me to be able to tell what's going on.
The problem is, indeed, getting someone to actually read your stuff. That’s how you get feedback, both to know where you are and how to improve, but all systems in this regard seem broken, for everyone.
Seldom do you read writing which is both in style as vivacious and arresting as this, whilst not precluding the author from making some absolutely cutthroat, incisive arguments. Very, very well done. You know this is good and I’m grateful for that. Thank you for being a writer.
The truth about art, any art, is that its your art if you would make it, care about it, hone it, without it returning anything material. You really don't have a genuine answer to this, until you've been ripped off and thrown under the bus more than once, and watched others take your efforts and chuckle at their new profits.
The emphasis always is to make something popular, that the masses will purchase to keep you going. But the masses want cheap, something that competes in price for the thoughtless crap they buy and toss aside.
Art though, true art isn't like that, and good art, and great art first has to disturb. It has to evade any comfortable displays, survive the lowliest cravings to make itself felt besides the thousands of useless welts one earns through creating it.
Impresarios have a bunch of clerical staff who are just as back stabbing as they are if not worse, cannibals probably have more ethos, if artists only understood where most of their advances go they would shatter into a million pieces.
This is incredibly relatable. Thank you for your honesty.
You’re welcome, and thank you! Can’t wait for you to read the one I’m doing now.
This reads like something Louis de Pointe du Lac would write, and therefore we need to reopen the vampire genre.
Heheheh thank you
Truth
I've been quietly reading you for a while. This one hit me at home, as it were. You toiled in newspapers, I toiled in advertising.
I've always had an intuitive sense of spatial relationships. How disparate objects can fit harmoniously into a space. Moving into a new apartment or a new house, without measuring, I know exactly how the furniture, etc would fit in each room. Used to piss my ex wife off to no end (she'd make me place everything wrongly and within about two weeks everything would end up where I said it should be the first time I saw the space). This sent me down a designer road, first as a graphic designer, then as an art director, then creative director.
But there was a problem, I'm a great visual designer but when I'd be partnered within a copywriter, about 80% of the time, I'd "get" what we were doing first and come up with the headline and often the copy. This got me labeled as difficult to work with. Copywriters are used to being top dogs on creative teams and they don't like it when they the art guy is, maybe not better, but faster conceptually than they are and has a better handle on strategy.
So they'd do the only logical thing, they'd tear me down. The agency also did the only logical thing, they promoted me because my work was very effective. But I was a freak because none of the traditional labels really fit.
One thing you learn when you go freelance or start your own shop (and I did both) is that you can do great work for other people all day long — but doing the same thing for yourself, god help you...
I've never started an actual Substack, but people seem to like what I've written in notes. There's that self promotion thing again. I'm happy and enjoy reacting to other people's writing, but can't bring myself to do the same.
Reading through the comments, some people seem to be confused about why other writers might not help promote the truly gifted — and it's just one ugly aspect of human nature, people tend to be jealous and envious of someone that they can see doing the thing that they love better than they can do it. Just like the copywriters I worked with.
I'm impressed with your clear eyed confidence in being your own impresario. That takes a lot of strength and cojones.
And now I'm just going to go ahead and restack you. This a hard bitter piece of tough love that a lot of people here could really use.
I really hope that they'll read it.
Oh, and you look fantastic in that photo and the Photoshop jock in me can tell that any retouching was extremely minimal.
I feel things can change through collectivism. There is power in numbers. The problem with todays creators is that we are going at it alone, and we shouldn't. We need to be collectively critiquing each others work, promoting each other, and showing/publishing together.
The rant you did about magats and libtards was raw and meaty. That 75/25 part is fun. And ..one last time before the summer ends.. Oh baby. I liked the article. This one I can comment.
Haven't heard in a while? I have never heard the term impresario. Maybe I've been under a rock, or I have never tried to be an 'artist'. I guess I know what an impresario is now. Love your art, won't you love it as well. I do it for you, and for me. You are wonderful, here is my world, can you see the depth, the pain, the sorrow and the tears, the hopes, the transformations, the tragedy and the triumph. No!? A one liner gets the prize, sweetie. A picture is a thousand words, where 400 is a stretch. Guess who wins. Tough shit. Now go back and cry some more blood.
Maybe, just maybe, I'll read your art now.
Knowing how the art world worked? How any world worked has been made visible with all the psyops. It appears that we all have to be our own impresarios now, it has always been that way, whether we like it or not, I suppose. That would be a me too. I'm both artist and impresario now. (Impresario only to a few though). Does that mean you would marry me? Add a hot bisexual girlfriend and that would be five X chromosomes to one Y. That seems a bit uneven. I believe that Y could put on a show, if inclined, but I don't count on it. You look good all dolled up, a work of art, if I may say. I can imagine you would look much better with wet hair, no makeup, and staring into this world, and I into that world.
Thank you! I have two serialised novels available for free on this very site! An impresario is a 20th c concept, I guess… they used to promote artists, before social media, so the artist could actually work on their art.
Now they promote themselves, and we have the landscape you behold.
I read everything your write. It makes me strong :) Keep at it :)
Awwwwwww, thank you! I shall.
THAT'S why I'm not famous and no one shares my work. I was starting to get nervous it was me.
Joking aside, I have wondered about this point you're making. But how can you tell it's you or everyone else? Sour grapes are easy enough to ignore, after you can't get them, but were they really sour or am I just not able to reach them? How can I tell if I'm as good as you're implying, so good, in fact, that everyone is jealously holding me back by not sharing my work, or if I'm just basic and mediocre and nobody really cares? I can't seem to be able to promote myself and I can't get published anywhere, and nobody in charge (editors, publishers, etc.) seems to care about my work at all, as I'm not even worth a response. So what I've come to is, I'm either very good, and all that you're saying about artists applies to me, or I'm very mediocre and no one shares or promotes my work or publishes me because my writing doesnt appeal to any audience. And not knowing sucks, especially when there's no way for me to be able to tell what's going on.
You know what I find helps? Getting rid of the terrible people in your life.
Most people, no matter how bad, if you ignore them, they'll forget you exist.
And the Internet is going to remember everything.
I've started feeling better since I decided everyone who plagiarizes me is merely my atelier.
Depending on the future it could be true or false, but I keep hoping we will keep eroding all our illusions down to the wax Truth in the end.
The problem is, indeed, getting someone to actually read your stuff. That’s how you get feedback, both to know where you are and how to improve, but all systems in this regard seem broken, for everyone.
You look a little like PJ Harvey.
GREAT article.
Heheh, thank you so much! I wish Substack would distribute it, but I haven’t figured out their secret requirements yet.
Seldom do you read writing which is both in style as vivacious and arresting as this, whilst not precluding the author from making some absolutely cutthroat, incisive arguments. Very, very well done. You know this is good and I’m grateful for that. Thank you for being a writer.
Oh my goodness! Thank you so much, that is maybe the kindest thing I’ve heard.
personal spectacle and the allure of the individual is now its own billboard.
Ha.... Love this!
The truth about art, any art, is that its your art if you would make it, care about it, hone it, without it returning anything material. You really don't have a genuine answer to this, until you've been ripped off and thrown under the bus more than once, and watched others take your efforts and chuckle at their new profits.
The emphasis always is to make something popular, that the masses will purchase to keep you going. But the masses want cheap, something that competes in price for the thoughtless crap they buy and toss aside.
Art though, true art isn't like that, and good art, and great art first has to disturb. It has to evade any comfortable displays, survive the lowliest cravings to make itself felt besides the thousands of useless welts one earns through creating it.
Very well said!
At certain points in your life you have to put on “In My Room” and remember why you started.
Impresarios have a bunch of clerical staff who are just as back stabbing as they are if not worse, cannibals probably have more ethos, if artists only understood where most of their advances go they would shatter into a million pieces.
Glum yet hilarious!
I feel like I’ve started one of those vaguely threatening chain letters: « If you don’t restack this, you’ll have eight years of bad luck… »