I had dinner and drinks with a few people the other night. One was my cousin George, an author, and professional comic book artist. The other was George’s friend Jim. Jim also happens to be a professional writer. I liked Jim from the short amount of time I spent with him. I think I’m naturally inclined to like intelligent creatives with a penchant for being kind and funny. I hope to know him better one day, but I have the one dinner right now.
George has “made it.” It’s pretty neato. We’re all super proud of him. I don’t mean to gush. I’ve only in recent years developed an adult friendship with him because of time and geography and life. But within the last five years, he’s kept popping up on my radar and we reconnected. I’m happy we did.
I remember being eight years old and George sitting down and showing me binders full of drawings. He showed me how to doodle Goofy. He probably doesn’t remember a lot of this. I know that he always knew what he wanted to do.
George is a now NYT bestselling author (he has been for a while, I just mean compared to when I was a kid), and I went to see him on one of his tour dates for the release of the twelfth and final book in his graphic novel series “The Olympians.” It’s excellent. You should read it. He’s started working on his next series, “The Asgardians.” I look forward to this. I dig mythology. He put on a fun presentation for the kids that came to see him at his stop on the book launch tour. They had a lot of fun. Before he came out, I sat quietly and listened to parents beam about how much their kids love the books and how much they’ve learned and how it’s inspired little Joey and Jane to learn this and that…and it was delightful. I’m glad I got to hear it.
George also rubs elbows with some of the best comic artists in the business, and it’s always fun to know people that know people. It adds perspective to things that you love as an outsider. As I enter the writing world and dig my heels in, I’m starting to generate my own connections. It feels good. It’s gravity. It’s the thing where you just know you have to keep walking in a direction and picking up people along the way. Not because you want something from them, but because you share an intention.
BUT ENOUGH ABOUT GEORGE. THIS ISN’T ABOUT GEORGE. I WANT TO TALK ABOUT MEEEEE.
But it’s funny, you know? You’re sitting around as kids, and life goes, and next thing you know, you’ve grown up, and you’re sitting at your desk, and you remember this place where you lost yourself in a story. You remember banging action figures together. Then you grind through your shit workday and go home. You drink, fall asleep, wake up, go to work, drink, shit, work, sleep, drink, maybe bang, drink, shit, shit (and I guess eat or whatever). Why the fuck don’t you engage in imagination more?
I used to set mine up in video game level format (my action figures). The hero would have to go through several minions and “mini-bosses” before collecting things that would power him or her up to the point where they could take on the big bad guy and save the day. I remember daydreaming about superheroes and sci-fi and video games and Robin Hood and Jedi Knights.
It’s taken me a while, but I finally detached from my corporate mothership desk—Halfway at least—I’m living off of my writing. I always knew I wanted to. Always. I was always convinced one way or another, whether from external factors or in my head, that I had to choose a more “pragmatic” approach. Always told that these things are “unrealistic.” That the “odds,” the “odds are against you.”
That’s all true. It’s unrealistic. The odds are against you. But the odds don’t account for people who just keep doing a thing. And obviously, people “make it.” People make the things that you love. Why couldn’t you make the things that you love? You can. It’s that simple. You just have to be willing to do it, forever, even if nothing happens.
Despite my corporate detour and a long time subsuming that empty feeling, I never really stopped making things, writing things, learning things. I always just put them in a cutsie hobby jar where other people patted me on the head and said, “oh, look at that thing that you did for fun.” And that sometimes hurts because I was proud of some of it. And it isn’t very comfortable to express the need for these things around those who don’t understand.
But I did do it for fun. That bit is valid. Even when it’s sad or mad fun. The act of doing the things is intrinsically fun. Imagination is fun. Even if it’s tearing you down, and yes, this sounds crazy. It’s a snake eating its tail, but that’s where many of the best, most terrible things came from in art, and you’ve all had fun enjoying those things—crying hard at a sad thing in the movies…fun. Being mortified at horror…fun. Confronting your inadequacy…brave…fun. Maybe fun is too simple a catchall. Perhaps “meaningful” is the word.
And it IS fun to do creative work. And it was more than fun too. It WAS meaningful. It’s a need that demands something. I just feel worse when I don’t feed it. Shit, sometimes I feel worse and feed it and feel worse, and everything goes to shit, but I can’t not do it. At any rate, I’m making a living off of writing, and a good one at that, nothing to complain about.
I’m not writing the things I would choose to yet for a living, but I’ll get there. I’m writing about the things that I happen to know. It’s fine. It’s not a complaint. It’s a start. I just have to keep moving. And this sounds crazy to anyone who doesn’t have that hole in their heart. It sounds like cheesy emo bullshit. Maybe it is, but then dammit, I don’t have the long bangs to cry into anymore (cut them off to join the Army).
Drawing for pleasure.
One thing I’ve been doing in the last year or so is drawing far more frequently, doing a lot more visual art generally. I’ve made it a point to do one drawing a day at least. I’ve been cranking out many of my favorite comic book characters and many of my own originals. It’s been fun. Fun like when I was a kid drawing in the back of my binder during class fun. Fun like when you swung a toy lightsaber and made the sound with your mouth “vvvvvvvvvmmmmmmmmm” fun.
I also share my drawings online frequently. I just do. They are sometimes good drawings, and sometimes they’re just okay. Some of them are outright bad. But they’re all fun. I don’t have a reason why. I have no aims with my drawings of making something out of them or off of them. I just do it for fun. I also make music post it. Mostly you get my writing. The music is the easiest for me to make between the three. The writing I like the most, though. It’s the one thing between the three that I feel I can call myself truly “professional” if it’s possible to do such a thing. Maybe it’s just because there’s a paycheck from the writing. I don’t know.
When I was at dinner with George and Jim, he made a curious statement. He said he “found it really interesting when adults still did drawings.” Referring to people who were not professional artists.
I’d never really considered it. I suppose it is more rare. Or less shared. It seemed true. Was there something intrinsically different about doodling, drawing? Was it less serious or acceptable for grownups to do?
“Hm.” I said, “That’s weird. I don’t know. I just like to do it. I don’t know why more adults don’t still draw. It’s fun. It’s imaginative.”
I thought a bit longer, “You never really have a shortage of assholes playing their shitty acoustic guitar in the middle of a room.” We laughed.
I meant that in some mediums, more people were likely to try and or share what they were doing. I have a few theories as to why this is, seeing as though I’ve done all of them at this point (points nose up in the air and looks down it snootily). Keep in mind that this is all based on a serious statistical analysis that I absolutely did not do and is not real. In other words, it’s all just spitballing from my mind ball.
I think when you play guitar or an instrument that even if it’s pretty awful, there’s a semblance of something there that you can recognize, and fundamentally it’s impermanent. The thing passes, and evidence of it doesn’t linger, unless it’s THAT bad or THAT good to the point where you’ve “struck a chord” (Pardon the pun. No, don’t pardon it. Take it. Eat it. Suck on it). So the song ends, and you move on.
With writing, I think it is possible to hide behind the volume of words. Of course, you can argue stylistic subjectivity. There is definitely horrible and excellent writing. Some of mine is genuinely horrible. I’m not sure if I’ll ever do anything great. But I have written a lot. And a few hundred words in you have a body of something and a sense that there is weight or humor or meaning or whatever. And people will either read it or not. But you can’t glean anything from writing just by glancing so it can still be “safe.” That’s not to say that people don’t bare their souls in their writing. I’m not saying that to be insulting. I simply mean that I can choose not to listen to audio or not read a thing. I can also read a thing and have it flit out of my head in a heartbeat. Also, I think more people can write competently (at least competently from the standpoint that they write a sentence and you can read a sentence “The dog went to the store.”). A person can write the same sentence as another writer and not note a difference whereas if I draw a hand and if a pro draws a hand you’ll see immense, ugly differences.
And poetry, while shorter, you can immediately write off (another pun…)if it doesn’t speak to you. I’ve never read a bad poem. I’ve only read poems that don’t mean anything to me. By their nature, poems can be almost anything. I’ve seen poems (including my own) that try too hard. I’ve also been knocked back by a great poem. You just know when you know.
But visual art, specifically a drawing, you can’t hide much. You can argue that you have a “style,” but for the most part, you can’t hide the flaws (except by just really covering them, which you can’t hide). Sure Picasso had a weird way of stylizing things, but I bet he could still draw a still life of a basket of fruit way better than you or I. Fundamentals before style. And when you put a drawing out there, it’s the only medium that you just BAM, take it in all at once. Therefore, it can be embarrassing. More embarrassing than the other mediums. You don’t need to open it. You just need to look at it and go, “ew, that sucks.” You put it out, and whoever sees it, sees it, warts and all. Therefore I just think it’s easier to appear competent at the other mediums.
But I do wish more people drew and showed their drawings and engaged in art. If you like a thing, you can try a thing. Like most endeavors, you just get better through sucking at it for so long and trying. I see improvement in my drawings. I want them to be good. I want to get better. That being said, I still just do them for fun. But I do think there are more of you out there putting things down on paper, having an itch that you can’t scratch from a long time ago when you lost yourself in a story. I want to be as good as a concert pianist as it relates to the piano. To get better at the piano, I sit down and run through scales and practice regularly. I do. I’m getting better. I never genuinely intend to be a concert pianist. It’s fun. Even the hard work is fun. I admit, my brain is wired differently. People think I’m a weirdo. Fuck you, weirdos are cool.
I’ve never lost whatever that was that made you want to doodle or daydream or throw yourself into something preposterous. I’ve gone through various phases where I’ve buried it under pragmatism and
“propriety,” but always arrived back at the notion that we only have one go at this life thing (as far as I can tell). Why not try? Somebody is making the things that you like. Why aren’t you making the things that you like?