Being An Artist

It's not like I had much choice.

For me, once I found I could draw pictures as a child, I was pretty much lost in the idea of "being an artist". My mom showed me how to draw a stickman from her brown vinyl easy chair, and I've been drawing variants of that stickman ever since.

I felt for years that actually calling myself an artist was pompous, as if the vocation was somehow above me. But gradually that has faded and now, finally - in my mid-40's - I realize that living off one's trust-fund and trying to sell awful watercolors of larvae in coffeeshops isn't really all that glamorous.

Who am I kidding? I still think it is. Well, the illusion of it anyway. I am totally cought up in the fantasy illusion of the glamour of doing this - even if it is small, obscure. Even if I'm not a star.

There are problems with this. First, I have no trust fund. Second, I don't do watercolor, and I'm not all that into larvae. Another is that I think I can actually be pretty good. Is that pompous of me to say so? Sure. But it's a sign of growth that I can give myself a compliment and not throttle myself immediately after saying it. Or is that what I just did?

(Okay, I take that "pompous" comment back. )

Being modest and and a successful artist do not go together. They cancel one another out. Like being a CEO - can any of them be modest? No. Otherwise their worthiness for forty million dollar annual bonuses might not be so obvious.

Artists need flair, confidence, brashness. Why oh why did I adopt modesty as a trait? I should hop into my time machine and talk to my kid self, telling the chubby tyke that he's the most spectacular artist of all time. Build up his protective layer of BS to surround his actual core talents so that he has a chance at making a go of it. Hey, this kid's a frickin' genius!

(Okay, not really. Probably not. Well, maybe. )

But this is not the point. The point is this kid needs more ego, like all the overpraised brats of today. Perhaps if I had more of that... (sigh). The trick is confidence. If you can fake that...

So, I am an artist. It is more than just what I do, it is what I am. I draw and write and create stuff. Even if it isn't what I do as a profession, even if I have no trust fund to support my illusions, it is what I do. It is one of the many things that defines me.

On Working The Same Job For A Long Time

It's not something I feel proud of. Not really. In today's world, it's more an admission of failure, a lack of ambition, to admit that you've been at the same job for over sixteen years. Political cycles rise and fall, friends marriages come and go, other friends careers go up, nowhere, around - anywhere - at least they move. But mine stays frozen in stasis. I am in an unfrozen caveman of a job - the same one I walked into sixteen years ago. Or maybe that qualifies as a frozen caveman job?

This is an odd thing today, considering todays outsourced world. I am a bit lucky to be part of such a stable, small company. In the working class, it is a mark of honor to be steadily employed this way for so long. It means I am a "good worker". I have a working class background, so maybe this attitude is all to easy for me to accept. The destiny of class? Argh - I hope not.

To the middle class it is a bit shameful, a mark of sloth. I am just not trying hard enough to improve myself. There must be something wrong with me. I feel a bit embarrassed to admitting it to my middle class friends. As for any upper class people I know (or don't, for that matter), it means I am a nonplayer, an ignorable worker bee - a cog, a maintenance man. I am below the radar of the upper classes, as much as a box of Kleenex.

The job, as it is, is at times engaging. It can be varied, with lots of access to computers and the internet and media - so I can amuse myself in down moments, and remain in the occasional illusion of sanity. I have gone through long periods of boredom and intense dissatisfaction with it. I have abused it at times, as at other times it has abused me.

The cycles, though, in their own way, may have helped keep me there. They became my life, my context, as i moved through phases, moods, fads. It was my constant.

Now I feel mortally trapped. What does that mean? Well, i feel Sisyphean, and the cycle is not stopping. It will take a large wrench, or a misstep and roll of the boulder for this clockwork to actually stop working and release me into a new life. Perhaps I will need to be flattened and killed to be reborn into something new. Change seems so distant, unattainable.

Where is my hope? Perhaps my hope is in bolluxing up and starting over. Perhaps it is in getting the gumption to move on, to break my class expectations. To be bold and break out of my working class sheep timidity.

But for now - baaaah! Baaaah!

Talk Radio

I am a supporter of the local Air America station in Minneapolis, AM950. I like my outrage left-leaning, aimed at appropriately large targets, rather than the usual right-wing target of, well, people like me.

There is only so much sympathy I can muster for downtrodden oil company executives and airline managers.

I've even given AM950 money. That's right - like public radio. It's worth it, to hear at least one voice of left-wing sanity amongst the vast AM wasteland of fundamentalist hate-shouters and Republican talking point cue-card readers. Even hearing some left-wing in-sanity is a relief. Why should the left not be allowed a little "extremism"? The right-wing version is everywhere. That's why Mike Malloy is so refreshing, even though the station is obviously a little afraid of him. I'm sure they find Mike too "hot" and that he scares some fence-sitters, so they put him on after midnight, a time where I admit I have unfortunately seldom caught up with him since being moved there.

I listen to talk radio like a drug. I admit to listening to right-wing radio even, at least to some of them that I can tolerate in measured doses. But not Rush. He's pure pompous bullshit. He must be incredibly well paid, he lies and makes facts up so well, so enthusiastically, one almost could think he believes them. That's what makes him so valuable to his masters, I'm sure. He sells their rancid soap with conviction.

Then there is the "intellectual" Rush - Dennis Prager. He speaks with a thoughtful, respectful tone - but his views are about the same as Rush's. Same garbage, different packaging. His true-believer listeners must say to themselves: "Oh, I prefer to have my misinformation in a more thoughtful package, thank you." Well, Dennis is your man, then.

What I find liberating about right-wing radio is their absolute dedication to saying anything - making up anything to get their point across. Not that I endorse this, and I honestly don't see this trait on left-wing radio (such as it is). But these guys barrel their way forcefully into the world of untruth, confident that no one will ever call them on it. They can slander, insult, lie - doesn't matter. No consequences. (Except for Don Imus - and who cares about him?)

Their sterling examples inspire me to speak my mind more. I do not try to lie and exaggerate like them, but they inspire me to be more bold. Their lesson is that there are NO repercussions. You can say anything, even the truth.

If they can say the crap they do and get away with it, based on zero expertise beyond sportscasting, then I sure as hell can too.

K. A. Webster