thoughts and whatever

I believe I'm two weeks into having quit my ad writing job and I'm already going through some potentially fruitful birthing pains. Here's what I mean. Basically, when I was writing ads, I could do videos on the side and there wasn't anything at stake. If the videos sucked, I still had a job, and I never tried very hard at my job because I always had the videos. Now it's just videos. Which is awesome, and weird. I'm really having to come to terms with what it means to be an artist for a living.

I recently got in an argument with a friend about potentially taking a job that paid well but was cheesy. I got pretty mad at him, but ultimately he's right in some ways and wrong in others. I think at this stage, I could still stash away a few bucks, and it's the sort of thing that would be fun to make and could disappear quickly if it needed to. On the other hand, I really need to start being concerned about the work I do. And honestly, I'm not really sure what that means.

Today we went to the new BCAM exhibit at LACMA, which was pretty exciting and a little daunting. There was a lot of great work, as well as a lot of the usual suspects, and it's about effing time, LA. What's daunting is that there's really only a handful of names that you see over and over. One one side of the building you have your Picassos, Degas, Matisses, as well as your Klees, Miros, and Kindinskis, and on the BCAM side you have Warhol, Lichtenstein, Rauschenberg,Pollack, Jeff Koons and Martin Amis. If you were from another planet, you could easily visit a couple big museums and come out thinking that painting is an art known only by about 9 people.

And that's scary. I'm not going into painting, but the video world is pretty similar. All said and done, there are a lot of little fish and about 9 really big ones. And I'm not even sure what is so scary about that. I guess that's why i'm writing at 2 in the morning with wrists aflame in carpal tunnel fire. I want to figure out what I'm so scared of and see if it's worth being scared of.

The first fear is about survival. Can I practice my craft in an exchange for food and rent? Which is definitely noble but doesn't necessarily get you too far.

Which brings up the second fear, the fear of not being a very good artist. Or the fear of doing things that take me away from my goal of being really good at something. I want to be a really good filmmaker. I want to make things that people love and want to be a part of their life. The artists that seem to rise up are the ones that are able to wrestle with interesting ideas and expose personal truths. I read part of a Tolstoy essay (the most Tolstoy I've ever read, promise) and he said that art's purpose is to make other humans feel less alone. I want to make things that people say "that's awesome, my dreams are totally like that." or "that's how I felt as a kid".

And how do you get to that point? I think you do by making lots and lots of things. That what Ira Glass says.


And that's what my hero Spike Jonze did. And I feel like with filmmaking, you really have to make a lot of things. If you're a painter, you have a million paintings and sketches that will never see the light of day, unfortunately there's this perception that directing is somehow different. That you just become good at it, and that's not the case. I don't think.

Anyway, I'm not even sure what I'm saying, but I just want to get stoked and act on it!





EYES: Holy Mountain
EARS: Goldspot