as my status as an artist is self-appointed, in the same sense that a usurper rules de facto—that is, by individually declaring it, and individual use of clumsy brute force to attain it, thus it is the truth, regardless of basic democracy or even common approval—maintaining an air of artisthood seems of greater importance to my ego than that of any natural artist i know. those are born artists, or people who understood their path from a young age, and were willing to work for it. i was never willing to work. i am only a suburban-born, middle-class dropout, raised in a household that revered art only in its humble, suburban, middle-class way, that of novel thrift-store lamps, family movies, Dave Grohl, my mother’s naïve yet proficient and charming portraits and life paintings and watercolors, my father’s technical mastery in copying metal riffs and organizing his music collection. my artistic life was steeped early in the invisible ubiquity of kitsch, which i loved with an almost underserved reverence, it being all i ever knew, yet so important has it been to me that culture considers my art one of its noble elements that i’ve tortured myself into making work out of what is supposed to be the greatest wellspring of joy in life, ART, further pained by the awareness that my shallow efforts will never elevate me above the truth that i am just a well-disguised Darger type: an uncultured, unknowing isolatee, disturbed by sexual and political insanity, and all-around too unwell to be a member of society, let alone the Canon. well, I’m tired of this stupid charade, and I’m convincing nobody.
let it be known that i play fewer video games than working men with a tenth the means and time; that i read little and very slowly; that i just watch new movies at the cinema and random crap i pirate that “seems good”, and that a “classic” film to me is often closer to 1993 than 1941; that, by my observation, holistic consumption is a natural behavior for the natural artist, an obsession not just in his own work but for the art that defines him, yet an uncomfortable and annoying slog for me. there are moments of sublimity, yes, sometimes life changing moments, but they are crowded by an insecure trudging through works i force myself to enjoy, and analyze truthfully, all in the name of “improving my taste”, so i can be a better artist. because that is the whole point of all of it: i want to make art, and i’m concerned with making art that is good, and which i personally like. yet i don’t really care as much about absorbing external sources in the same way a natural artist does. my obsession is singular to making the thing, not looking at other things. deeply, i’m not a lover of art, but of the craft, so the art is in a sense my medicine or my homework—i must take it because it will help me with the thing i truly care about.
but i’m ready to accept that i will gain little by plowing through the world of art at a pace or in a place not suitable for me, and while i extol the benefits of staying uncomfortable with practice and intake, it will do me no good to take so much or such bitter medicine. with this manifesto i only want to declare that i am of relatively few influences outside myself, yet many inside, so far as that, while maybe no longer an outsider artist, i am certainly and forever still an “insider artist”; there will be more classics i miss than which I’ll ever know—let alone reference—and, ultimately, it’s alright. i only want to re-learn how to love deeply the few things i can take in before i burn out or burst open. i’m ready to Let Me Enjoy Things.