Changing the World - One Gaping Void at a Time
A friend of mine sent me a link to this gapingvoid post, which contains forty-five random notes assembled by Hugh MacLeod on his experiences creating the site and his thousands of "cartoons drawn on the back of business cards."
My friend was also kind enough to send me an additional link, a very lengthy annotated list drawn up by Mr. MacLeod on the subject, How To Be Creative (apparently, the most read post on his blog).
Although the list is thirty-one items long and the annotations run to 10,000 words, I would encourage anyone who has ever struggled with striking a balance between creative pursuits (art, music, poetry) and making a living to read it (though, given that he gets something like 3,000 pageviews a day, you may bloody well already have).
I could probably write several thousand words of my own in response, but I will restrict myself to two comments:
1) He writes, "The sovereignty you have over your work will inspire far more people than the actual content ever will." Creative pursuits, taken as an end in themselves like his cartooning, are an inspirational act of personal freedom. I referred once to Mr. MacLeod's thoughts on marketing when I first started blogging almost a year ago. At that point, I used him as an example of someone whose conception of marketing bordered on the religious. I was wrong. His conception and perspective are pure, latter-day, down-to-earth, (Scottish?) existentialism (though he does still mention "God" here and there).
2) As someone who has frequently felt my life split between my "creative pursuits" and my "day job," I found it particularly enlightening, and oddly comforting, to read the following:
The creative person basically has two kinds of jobs: One is the sexy, creative kind. Second is the kind that pays the bills. Sometimes the task in hand covers both bases, but not often. This tense duality will always play center stage. It will never be transcended.
The fatalism of that statement is tempered by its pragmatism. Rather than leading to a drastic and radical break - "I'm going to chuck it all and pursue my music full-time; money be damned" - it encourages a constructive engagement with this tension, one that treats it as a source of potential strength, and even as a kind of blessing.
Which of Mr. Gaping Void's thoughts strike a nerve, existential or otherwise, with you?
Image courtesy of gapingvoid.
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here is my comment
Posted by: Komra Moriko @ Sep 11, 2007