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> Hi. I’m an artist. I have spent most of my life practicing my craft. I think that until we have abandoned the concept of “working for a living”, this line

> Hi. I’m an artist. I have spent most of my life practicing my craft. I think that until we have abandoned the concept of “working for a living”, this line of thought is a bunch of wankery. If you seriously think that the deepest spiritual questions of why we create are "a bunch of wankery" then you are no artist. A producer of things, maybe. A very successful producer of wonderful, beautiful and desirable things perhaps. But not an artist.

egypturnash 4y ago
Ah yes, and now we have the “you can’t be a real artist if you consider any practical realities of putting food on the table with your work” wankery. I’ll just go subsist on moonbeams and philosophy so I can be a real artist then. Wanker.
- nonrandomstring 4y ago
  I won't push you on it any more, because you're not ready. But I hope that one day you'll find a whole lot more to the world than what you see now.
  - egypturnash 4y ago
    Congratulations on maintaining your sense of smug superiority throughout this discussion. I am, as I said, a working artist. I have done multiple solo projects that spanned one or more years, each more ambitious than the last. I have cover quotes from four people with something like seven Hugos between them on my last graphic novel. I am now returning to a project that I put down for a couple of years because it got to a point where the polish it needed was not compatible with the ways my income is structured. I recently had a boring corporate art gig work out really well so I get to spend at least a few months not worrying about where my rent is coming from, and I’m stopping less ambitious projects that were easier to crank out at high speed in favor of this crazy thing. They were also ones that felt more likely to be popular. The serious big projects? I care that they please me, first and foremost; I do them because I have something I need to say through the medium of words and pictures, I do not worry that I have peaked. I worry about paying my fucking bills in a world that’s increasingly more hostile to making a living as an artist. I worry about every social site wanting to hide posts that link to my site because these corporate hellsites are optimized to keep people scrolling past interchangeable “content” that fills the space between ads. When I finish this project, I am confident that my next project will build on the lessons I learnt doing this one, as it built on what I learnt in my previous major workings. Perhaps it will be even more ambitious. Perhaps it will be deliberately much less ambitious, so I can kick back and have some fun without pushing myself to new heights for a while. I’ll still keep getting better, every time you draw something you get a tiny bit better at drawing that thing, and it doesn’t go away unless you suffer major brain damage. Hell, even that isn’t necessarily an obstacle - there’s a story about one Warner Brothers animator in the forties who had a bad concussion in a car accident, and found that his abilities had taken a major leap forwards once he was healed up and ready to get back to work. Lose my drawing arm? I’ve seen friends shift off their dominant hand due to injury, and go from uncoordinated wobbly messes to just as good as before in a month or two of breaking out the drills they used back in art school. Eventually there is a point where my whole body will start to break down. That is when I expect to peak: when I am physically incapable of manipulating tools and seeing my canvas. But sure, I’m “not ready” and there’s “more to the world”. And worrying about intellectual property has nothing to do with wanting to be able to make a living. And I’m not really “an artist”. But you’re still a pretentious wanker.
    - nonrandomstring 4y ago
      Why did it take you getting really quite angry before saying some truly interesting and engaging things? If you hadn't been so vulgar this could have turned into a really interesting conversation about capacity, maturity, self-development, ... all the things I wanted to talk about that aren't the dull, common rubble of how shit life is under late capitalism. It's shit. We get it. The only important question is what you're going to do about it. But if you only see threats (pretentious wankers) everywhere, those options are going to be quite limited. And I'm not hurt by what you say. I'm British and a writer. Of course I'm a pretentious wanker and I'm pleased you're smart enough to see it.

egypturnash 4y ago

Ah yes, and now we have the “you can’t be a real artist if you consider any practical realities of putting food on the table with your work” wankery. I’ll just go subsist on moonbeams and philosophy so I can be a real artist then. Wanker.

nonrandomstring 4y ago
I won't push you on it any more, because you're not ready. But I hope that one day you'll find a whole lot more to the world than what you see now.
- egypturnash 4y ago
  Congratulations on maintaining your sense of smug superiority throughout this discussion. I am, as I said, a working artist. I have done multiple solo projects that spanned one or more years, each more ambitious than the last. I have cover quotes from four people with something like seven Hugos between them on my last graphic novel. I am now returning to a project that I put down for a couple of years because it got to a point where the polish it needed was not compatible with the ways my income is structured. I recently had a boring corporate art gig work out really well so I get to spend at least a few months not worrying about where my rent is coming from, and I’m stopping less ambitious projects that were easier to crank out at high speed in favor of this crazy thing. They were also ones that felt more likely to be popular. The serious big projects? I care that they please me, first and foremost; I do them because I have something I need to say through the medium of words and pictures, I do not worry that I have peaked. I worry about paying my fucking bills in a world that’s increasingly more hostile to making a living as an artist. I worry about every social site wanting to hide posts that link to my site because these corporate hellsites are optimized to keep people scrolling past interchangeable “content” that fills the space between ads. When I finish this project, I am confident that my next project will build on the lessons I learnt doing this one, as it built on what I learnt in my previous major workings. Perhaps it will be even more ambitious. Perhaps it will be deliberately much less ambitious, so I can kick back and have some fun without pushing myself to new heights for a while. I’ll still keep getting better, every time you draw something you get a tiny bit better at drawing that thing, and it doesn’t go away unless you suffer major brain damage. Hell, even that isn’t necessarily an obstacle - there’s a story about one Warner Brothers animator in the forties who had a bad concussion in a car accident, and found that his abilities had taken a major leap forwards once he was healed up and ready to get back to work. Lose my drawing arm? I’ve seen friends shift off their dominant hand due to injury, and go from uncoordinated wobbly messes to just as good as before in a month or two of breaking out the drills they used back in art school. Eventually there is a point where my whole body will start to break down. That is when I expect to peak: when I am physically incapable of manipulating tools and seeing my canvas. But sure, I’m “not ready” and there’s “more to the world”. And worrying about intellectual property has nothing to do with wanting to be able to make a living. And I’m not really “an artist”. But you’re still a pretentious wanker.
  - nonrandomstring 4y ago
    Why did it take you getting really quite angry before saying some truly interesting and engaging things? If you hadn't been so vulgar this could have turned into a really interesting conversation about capacity, maturity, self-development, ... all the things I wanted to talk about that aren't the dull, common rubble of how shit life is under late capitalism. It's shit. We get it. The only important question is what you're going to do about it. But if you only see threats (pretentious wankers) everywhere, those options are going to be quite limited. And I'm not hurt by what you say. I'm British and a writer. Of course I'm a pretentious wanker and I'm pleased you're smart enough to see it.