It is one of the great observable truths of the human condition that we struggle constantly to align our internal world to the external world or align the external world to our internal world. We push and pull on these things, wiggle and squirm, build up and burn down, often with disastrous consequences, largely because, I think, these two ideas have very little to do with each other. Which is not to say that the external world invalidates our internal world, or that the way things work in our head trump the mechanics of the world around us. This is simply to point out the discrepancy, to focus, for a moment, our thoughts on space between our eyeballs and brains. As far as the external world is concerned, in that space sits clusters of finely tuned, highly evolved optical nerves, capable of interpreting chaotically confusing photonic blasts into signals that tell us things like distance, shape, color, and a myriad of other more complex ideas. In my internal world, however, that small distance between the physical intersection of the world and my body and my actual brain, the seat of my thought, houses the most human attribute of all. Imagination.
I was listening to an episode of Radio Lab recently, in which Robert and Jad do a brief thought exercise. Simply put, Robert asks Jad to imagine a canary, but to color it purple, give it a red racing stripe and polka dots. He then points out that, though Jad has successfully conjured a mental image, no such creature exists. No animal matching that description lives anywhere in the cosmos, to the best of our knowledge. But we can imagine that it might. And therein, I think, lies the secret to humanities great successes on Earth, and to the suffering we find it so easy to experience in life. We can imagine many beautiful things, take them apart and look at their imaginary pieces, put them back together and make them run, and none of this time, energy, feeling, or joy corresponds to anything outside of our own heads. Therein, for me, lies the desire to be an artist. To find some way to communicate those things, bring those visions to life. To close the Gap of Imagination a little. I now think of myself as an artist. It has become an internal definition that I use when that inevitable question of, “Who or what is Zach?” comes up.
“Oh, he’s an artist living in such and such…”
And to be clear, defining myself as an artist is obviously not a complete definition. Being an artist doesn’t successfully describe many things about me, like how or what I eat, my bathroom habits, the way I lay in bed, or the kinds of breakfast cereal I might prefer. It does not successfully describe my relationship with my fiance or my parents. But it is efficient. It’s a mission statement. It’s an internal measurement, like a life thermometer, and it has a certain number of external values that go with it.
This is where the frustrations that Chris Oatley mentions in his latest blog post, Desire vs. Frustration, come in. What happens when your internal definition, though admittedly shorthand, isn’t supported by your external circumstances? This is what leads me to say things like, “I do such and such during the day, but I’m really an artist/illustrator/comic creator.”
And then, I am led to ask the question, “But is that true? Am I REALLY REALLY an artist/illustrator/comic creator? My circumstances don’t match my description of myself.”
And there’s the rub. I’m looking down the road at the American economy, at the things I’ve committed to get out of life that nothing to do with being an artist, and recognize the very real possibility that the external world may never align itself to my internal world. That feeling sits inside me with the firm belief that I sure as shit will not compromise my internal world to match the external world. So where does that leave me?
In the very same set of shoes as thousands of others, I suspect. Millions. Well, billions, technically. With that supremely human ability to see things that aren’t there, to believe things that aren’t true, in the strictest sense.
I have, as do billions of others, that oft debated human capacity, choice. I’m not really interested in getting into the subject of free will just at the moment, because the important part, to me, is feeling ownership of your behavior, whatever causes your behavior. And I think you’d be hard pressed to say truthfully something other than that, whether or not we actually make choices, life certainly feels like we make choices.
My choice concerns the realization that the main difference between my internal world and the external world, for me, doesn’t lie in other peoples behaviors or the mechanics of the universe, but, in fact, lies in how I behave. So, I choose to behave differently. I choose to evolve. I choose to alter not my internal world nor the external world, but the Gap of Imagination.
This weekend I did it by choosing to attempt to draw and paint something I’ve never done before. I want some environmental art in my portfolio. I want experience with limited color palettes. I want to get better at perspective. There’s a ton of great reference and research, blogs and books out there for all of these things. But none of them do you any good if you don’t try it.
This is my main lesson from this painting, the one that has slowly sunk in after the past several days. I think it was good NOT to put in the research, just to take what I know and go for it, all out. Because now I have this (not very good) painting. But the thing that this (not very good) painting IS very good at is showing me where to put in my research, how to make it really count. It’s really good at showing me, in an image, in a succinct story, what I know and what I don’t. Some very helpful critiques from friends and collaborators have really highlighted where I should spend some time learning.
Looking at the image below, the values in the background are WAY to similar. I need to spend some time studying atmospheric perspective. It’s important to note that it works differently at night than during the day. The composition is wonky, thrown off by the hard line down the middle, created by using two point perspective too simply. It was a good experiment with the limited color palette and the perspective, but you can’t let a limited color palette limit your value palette, and you can’t let perspective be more important than composition. Both good lessons for me. Also, it’s messy. I clearly have to learn a lot/shore up my process in regards to producing digital things quickly. There’s a lot of ways Photoshop can help you move faster, and I need to learn a few of them.
Anyway, if you have additional insights or critiques, I more than welcome them and really appreciate you taking the time to look.
All this is to say, though, just do it. There will likely never be a time when your internal world and external world line up perfectly and create a life full of ease and happiness for you. People are just inherently too creative for that. But the thing that’s malleable, that fits into that Gap of Imagination, is you. Yourself. Your person and persona.
History, I think, if you could know it all, would look like a millipede, each leg one of millions of aborted futures, and the body not a straight line of progress, but a segmented, undulating series of curvatures, the average of which is progress, though not through any logical forward motion. And history, like a millipede, stinks when you squish it. I say these things to remind myself that history is messy, success is the realm of future, and being an artist is just part of now. And the only opportunity you’ll ever really have to start bending and stretching and spanning the gap is now.
September 13, 2010
Spanning the Imagination Gap
February 23, 2010
Hulking Out
An exploration of my favorite comic book character and why he sets my imagination on fire.
WARNING: In good conscience, readers, I cannot let you continue on without confessing what I’m sure you’ve surmised. I am a comic book nerd. Raised in the American comic book tradition. Much to the chagrin of independent creators everywhere, I love superheroes. Now, I don’t really read the big two very much anymore, but when I point to the stories, characters, artists, and writers who inspired me as a kid, I find I unerringly refer to those that worked on and came from superhero comics.
So, with that out of the way, those of you who are not interested in superheroes of any kind or what I have to say about them have moved on to another corner of the Internet, I’m sure (the whole thing is corners, I suspect), and those of you that remain suffer from at least some affection or direct ire for the genre.
Some quick superhero philosophy. The genre does a couple things well that has hooked children for generations. Chiefly, the key to anybody being a superhero is that they are empowered. Where others are weak, they are strong. Where others are afraid, they are fearless. When any human in their right mind would want to stick their head in the sand and try to ignore the oncoming wave of oblivion, they stand, and (usually) win. What’s not to love? They are a projection of what we wish we could be. Faced with the most difficult situations we can imagine, they have the courage and strength make the right decisions.
I think, on the flip-side of being individually empowered, our poor superheroes are also prone to being propagandized as models of behavior or villainized as fascist expressions of masculine dominance. And I can’t really disagree. The thing about being empowered enough to make your own rules is that you would have to believe you know better than everyone else when making decisions that directly affect them. So naturally, readers and writers cast one of two lights on that idea. Either the characters DO know better, and so represent a way that we, the consumers, are supposed to behave, or the characters DON’T know better, and represent a fallacy of thought that we, the consumers, should avoid. I’m not trying to pass a value judgment on either school of thought. I think entertaining stories arise from each idea.
My deep and abiding love for my favorite comic book character, though, springs from the idea that he breaks this rule, due to his nature. In case you hadn’t guessed by the title, my favorite character is the Hulk. Now, I will not attempt to argue that the Hulk has been flawlessly written and utilized in his 60 some-odd years of comic book existence. But in concept, I believe he acknowledges both of the ideas above that make superheroes something to aspire to and something to fear.
Hulk is the strongest there is. Physically. And the more you try to prove that he’s not the strongest there is, guess what? The stronger he gets. Hulk is the ultimate expression of being able to change the world around you to suit yourself. Who can forcibly stop the Hulk from getting what he wants? Nobody. You just have to calm him down. I would like to believe that my anger and outrage at the state of the world had such a power to change it. That murder and kidnappings, earthquakes and starvation, climate change and environmental corruption could be halted simply by the power of my anger. It’s not the case, but therein lies one reason I love the Big Green Guy.
But I also know that I don’t know everything, and if I did have the power to change the world, even if I was trying to make it better for everybody, I wouldn’t necessarily succeed. Hulk, in concept, acknowledges this. His desires are simple, generally non-combative feelings centering around wanting to be left alone or to help some individual he cares for. But his efforts are equally likely to lay waste to beneficial things as they are to be beneficial. In the face of such power, who’s mind wouldn’t seem like an infant’s? Even the smartest person would have trouble predicting the consequences of his or her own actions when they could be so catastrophically huge. Here the Hulk serves as a humbling reminder, to me, that the greatest power in the world does not absolve us of responsibility to each other, and disregarding the welfare of others even briefly can turn you into a monster.
And then there’s the human aspect of the Hulk. Not physically strong, but highly intelligent and highly socially responsible. Bruce Banner pits every ounce of his control against that urge to change things out of anger, to act rashly. Because he does not want to see anyone get hurt. I think, or rather I hope, that it is a statistically rare person among us who can really think about physical harm coming to somebody else and sincerely wish it upon them. Who can think that they would like (and I mean LIKE) to be the cause of someone else’s pain, broken bones, maiming, disease or death. I know that the thought of really being responsible for things like that turns my stomach. And Bruce Banner can unleash the ultimate human force for change at any time, but the thought of those consequences is enough to encourage him to fight to restrain it until the most necessary of moments.
And which one of them is right? Which one of them is necessary? They both are, to me. I think the story telling bears this out. It’s a favorite of writers to make the Hulk a necessary solution to a problem, even though Banner is sort of the model human (intelligent, generous, societally conscious, self-sacrifing). They are both necessary, both right, depending upon the circumstance
I find this concept so compelling. This idea of Man vs. Monster, Intelligence vs. Strength, Society vs. Independence. But what I especially love about the Hulk is that there isn’t really a right answer. Just an interesting question.
February 17, 2010
Managing Expectations
All morning I’ve been kicking the idea around in my head of renaming my blog “The Blunderdome.”
The dialogue in my mind:
Some Vaguely Interested But Ultimately Confused Party (or SVIBUCP, from here on out): “The Blunderdome? Why the Blunderdome?”
ME: (Snarkily) “You know, just to manage expectations.”
SVIBUCP: “Oh. I don’t get it.”
ME: (As always, totally off my game once sarcasm has been misreceived.) “Uh… well, y’know. To acknowledge the mistakes that I’ll inevitably make.”
SVIBUCP: “Oh. So that people will expect you make mistakes?”
ME: “Yeah. No. I dunno. It was funnier in my mind.”
SVIBUCP: “It was supposed to be funny?”
ME: “Oy. See, if you got the joke in the first place, you’d see why this is funny!”
SVIBUCP: “I remain unconvinced.”
This led me to begin pondering the idea of managing expectations. The pros and cons, if you will. Now, before you read any further, a brief disclaimer. Semantics, connotations, and context are extremely important to me. If you are annoyed by the parsing of language, so that a thing that means one thing suddenly appears to mean several, you should probably no longer read this blog. The value of these explorations of the vagaries of implied meanings is something that I see, but I by no means expect anyone to share it. My past is littered with the corpses of lively parties that I have brutally killed with such discussions as the ones I will frequently have with myself here. Rest assured, if you walk away muttering, “This fella thinks too hard” you will here no disagreement or begrudging insults from my corner.
Anyway, back to managing expectations. This is a weird phrase. On its surface, I’m inclined to think it’s a good thing. We don’t want other people to expect more than we can give, because we don’t want them to be disappointed. So, saying that we should manage expectation is another way of saying that we should avoid disappointing others. Professionally, that’s probably sound advice.
Many people turn this particular dial even further, and use it to imply that we should make other people expect LESS than we can give, so when we deliver what we’re capable of, not only are they not disappointed, they’re actually surprised and thrilled. Again, professionally, probably a good thing.
Where I suspect this particular construction of the idea falls apart (at least for me) is personally. I have noted that I have a propensity to only barely deliver what I have promised myself, if at all. I have read a number of blogs and articles, heard a number of interviews and soap box diatribes (not pointing fingers, guarantee if you’re reading this I’m not talking about you) that all say, “Goals are great. But set your goals realistically. Then maybe you can actually get them.”
Which sounds very magnanimous. “They” don’t want to see us depressed by not having what we want, and since “they” can’t give us what we want, “they” counsel us to instead not want so much. Being someone who has struggled to muster motivation and ambition for much of his life, I can safely say this is not good advice for everyone. If I do not challenge myself to do something harder than float and be contented with my lot, guess what? I’ll float and be contented with my lot, at least in terms of my behavior. I (like many) will still whine, whine, whine about where I’d like to be versus where I am, and then console myself with the idea that it’d be really hard to get there, and I’ve set my goals much more realistically, which explains why I’m so happy! Right? RIGHT?!
If you, friend and reader, like me, have trouble mustering motivation or activating ambition, if you respect humility above other virtues and find this gives you some bizarre aversion to feeling successful, let me share with you what makes me feel the happiest. Do not compromise your desires. Want, with utter abandon, whatever it is that you want. Set goals that involve ACTUALLY GETTING PART OF WHAT YOU WANT. Manage your expectations right up to the freakin’ stars. If you are forced by others to stop and think about how difficult to achieve the thing you want is, recognize that they are right, and you already know that. Forgive yourself for not getting there. Love yourself for trying.
To rip an idea from the heads of many wiser, smarter, happier, more successful people than I, the only guarantee you have is the journey. Accept that many people will want to make a house along the side of the road. Know that you don’t have to. There’s nothing wrong with wanting, walking further.
I’m not saying trample others. Charging ahead blindly, without regards for those around you, is as foolish and hurtful as it’s been for the last hundred million years. But for me, having a realistic goal doesn’t mean settling, it means not feeling guilty about wanting it.
February 16, 2010
Life, Challenges, Rewards
I am 25 years old. This July I will be 26. I was an actor for most of my young life. I did at least two plays a year, community, school, professional or otherwise, from the fifth grade until two years ago. Or three now, I guess. Through high school, college, and my professional career, it actually averages out to four plays a year. It was a huge part of my life for most of the time that I was turning from a child into an adult. There were, understandably, a lot of parts of my identity that were inimically tangled up with what I did and how well I did it. Which made me utterly unable to do it professionally. I did not have a level of objectivity that allowed me to deal with failures in that arena. And like any field, a theatrical career is full of failures, and, more significantly, perhaps, compromising successes.
In the midst of deep introspection, totally unhappy with my artistic pursuit, feeling like I was letting down my friends and family who had expectations for my acting career in addition to totally failing myself, I began drawing again. Dredging the canals of my imagination, turning it all into what had, as a youth, occupied an even greater portion of my imagination than acting. Illustration, comics, and mythology. It has been a long, cathartic road, realizing that I had spent my life and entire school career (unless I go to grad school, which feels unlikely) studying something that I didn’t want to have to study to finding a something I had always been passionate about in addition to truly afraid of.
I am smart. I always got good grades. Acting was, for me, pretty easy. This made failures especially riling, because it was always the fact that I wasn’t trying hard enough that was at the root. But most of the time, I didn’t have to try hard. Conversely, though I may have had some advantage over other five year olds in the realm of art, I lost that edge long ago. I am, generously speaking, an average artist. I see objectively in my more successful work an unexpected aptitude for color selection, but if I have any natural advantages in this field, that’s where it ends. Everything else that I do right, or close to right, has been absorbed the hard way, through tens of thousand of truly crap drawings, to the level of only sort of crap drawings. And I have loved every minute of it.
It feels like failing. But it feels like failing up. It’s hard to really feel like I’m failing when, even though I’m not great, I’m better than I was. Because I look at drawings from three years ago, and I SUCKED. Fantastically. And I can see what I’ve learned in the drawings now. And I forgive myself what I don’t know, because I’m getting a late start on all of this. I only know as much as I have taught myself, which is extremely liberating. Like a freelance illustrator, I am my boss. Or more specifically, my instructor. I have to determine the methods by which I learn the best, I have to apply myself, produce the dedication to create the assignments and then complete them. I fail all the time. And every once in a while, I succeed. I have a feeling I’m doing everything the hard way, the wrong way, but I also have a feeling that it’s valuable to me because it’s my way.
Right now, I make my money working a non-creative day job that rankles me at the best of times. But it pays bills. I have the liberty to study my interests in the off hours. I’ve even started to make a little money off of illustration projects here and there. I just got engaged to my beautiful fiance, who’s been with me for these last very challenging six years. We are shopping for a condo. We will turn part of it into a studio where we can each pursue our creative careers. We put in an offer this last weekend, but it got rejected. Another upward failure, because now we know what putting in an offer is like.
My day job is an upward failure, because even though I’m not doing what I want, I’m using the money to push me closer to where I can do what I want.
I think, honestly, from the outside, a true creative professional (or anyone, really) might look at my life and think it a mediocre, unfulfilled existence. That I’m floating along, halfway in between a lot of things, with no guarantee of them lining up in the future. But one thing I learned from failing at what I thought I would do only to find joy in failing at what I didn’t think I would do is that the rewards in my life are simply where I choose to see them.
Here is a very simple way that I apply this idea to my artwork. Everytime I look at something and see that I’ve done it wrong, have I failed at doing that thing? Yes. Sure. Undoubtedly. What I created was not what I set out to do.
But is noticing, knowing that I did it wrong a failure? Absolutely not. It is a success. A success of mental evolution. It is the very mechanic of auto-didactic success. If I have learned that lesson, will I do it wrong again? No! At least, not in the same way.
Everybody says appreciate your failures. I say remember that SOMEBODY has to teach you what you don’t know. Might as well be you.
January 8, 2010
How We Make Our Own Future
Copied and extended from a Twitter conversation with Chris Oatley (whose site can be found via the links section below).
I had a very wise Theater professor, Sarah Freeman (read her book), who said if there’s a specific kind of theater you want to do, make it. I find that’s true in every profession I have been a part of. It’s hard, and I’m just starting to really do it, but we must take responsibility for creating our own opportunities.
An example. Last January, My dad, like hundreds of thousands of others, got laid off. He chose to start a small business. I can assure you it was not easy to get the loans and capital to start a business last year, but he said to me, “It’s all out there to be done, if I have the energy to do it.”
And it’s true. He’s doing quite well right now with his shop (you can visit him at www.littlerivercigarcompany.com) I think about that quote daily as I face the transition to a traditionally difficult job in a poor economy.
I want to be an artist more than anything. But my true dream is to produce art for things that inspire me, light the fires of my imagination, and produce stories in any format that are things that I believe in. I’m sure other people are working on projects of which I would LOVE to be a part. But I know two things about those projects:
1. There are probably TONS of artists and creatives who would love to be involved.
2. I haven’t earned my place there yet.
I think what my professor meant was not that it’s impossible to be involved in a project with other people and have it be the sort of project that you’d like to work on. I think what she meant is that you must SHOW other people how hard you believe. Make them want to work with YOU. Show them what you can bring to what they love. And then combine imaginations, join forces, and produce something incredible.
This is why the artwork and stories birthed of own my imagination are so important to me. They are my torch. My beacon. My Artist Signal. Something that says, “Gather here with me, and let’s imagine other places.”
When we create with these things in mind, I believe that other people can sense it. They can look at our work and see the appeal of passion.
How can I abandon my dayjob and financial security to pursue this passion? Because, I believe, like my dad, that if I simply have the energy and will to follow through, to not quit, I’ll find my way. I’ll end up somewhere, and the gamble that it might be worse than where I am is worth the chance that it might be everything that I dream it will. Of course, I will attempt to make this transition intelligently. But that will simply be putting in the footwork to do what I want to do. Kick in the doors, shatter the windows, beat down the walls. Carve out the niche that I wish already existed. If I cannot find the place where my life is exactly as I want it to be, I will make it.
UP! Fair
