#11. The Art of Making Art
…Is not what I thought it was.
I'm a writer and an artist, and I've been listening to Sunday in the Park with George, Stephen Sondheim's musical about the creation of art, for at least 35 years, and I had thought that I knew what it was saying.
I obviously can't recount the whole thing here, but there is an artist in the second act who creates giant light-and-laser machines called Chromolumes, and he sings a well-known song called "Putting It Together." The song is all about how art isn't easy and you have to do a lot of grinding and networking and schmoozing to make it work. Here's some of the lyrics:
Art isn't easy--
Even when you're ho
Advancing art is easy--
Financing it is not
A vision's just a vision
If it's only in your heed
If no one gets to see it
It's as good as dead
It has to come to light!
Link by link
Making the connections
Drink by drink
Fixing and perfecting the design
Adding just a dab of politician
Always knowing where to draw the line
Lining up the funds but in addition
Lining up a prominent commission
Otherwise your perfect composition
Isn't going to get much exhibition
This is just a small section of quite long song, but you get the idea. Art, in this song, is about the grind. It's about posting reels to Instagram and going on tour and networking at writers conferences. And for a long time, that was the kind of artist (writer) that I was. I did the grind. And then I stopped.
There's another section of the song that goes like this:
Overnight you're a trend
You're the right combination--
Then the trend's at an end
You're suddenly last year's sensation
That's where I kinda felt for a long time. I hit it big in 2010, but no book I ever wrote (except one weird exception) has sold as well as my debut, Variant.
But the thing is: there's an entirely different song in Sunday in the Park with George that I have also loved, and only recently did I realize that this artist was singing from a different perspective--that disillusioned artist whose trend's at an end.
Here George, the artist, sings to his partner Dot:
[[Dot]]
Are you working on something new?
[[George]]
No
[[Dot]]
That is not like you, George
[[George]]
I've nothing to say
[[Dot]]
You have many things
[[George]]
Well, nothing that's not been said
[[Dot]]
Said by you, though, George?
[[George]]
I do not know where to go
[[Dot]]
And nor did I
[[George]]
I want to make things that count,
Things that will be new...
[[Dot]]
I did what I had to do...
[[George]]
What am I to do?
[[Dot]]
Move on...
Stop worrying where you're going-
Move on
If you can know where you're going
You've gone
Just keep moving on
...
[[Dot]]
Stop worrying it your vision
Is new
Let others make that decision-
They usually do
You keep moving on
...
[[Dot]]
Anything you do
Let it come from you
Then it will be new
Give us more to see...
Anyway, all of this to say that I view art a little differently now. I do not in ANY WAY want to disparage the grind, because I know too many authors who are making good livings and enjoying themselves with the grind. But it's not for me anymore. In art, and in life, I'm just going to keep moving on.
PS: If you're not a Broadway person, but you know The Princess Bride, Inigo Montoya is about to blow your mind in this clip.
Bits and Bobs from the News
#1. A baby was the subject of the first ever bespoke gene-editing treatment. Using CRISPR, which is a technology that lets scientists play with genes, 10-month-old KJ Muldoon had his (her? their? not sure) genes edited to cure a very rare genetic disease. CRISPR has been played with before to do all kinds of splicing and dicing, even used on patients, particularly Alzheimers patients, but this is the first time that it targeted a specific thing in a specific kid and fixed it. WE'RE LIVING IN THE FUTURE.
#2. Speaking of living in the future, scientists at MIT have--for the first time--been able to actually take a picture of an atom. In an article in the journal Physical Review Letters, they were able to: use a "lattice of light" to freeze atoms in place, and then use lasers to illuminate the atoms, and then... use a Polaroid? The yellowish things on the left are bosons and they're wiggly, and the red ones on the right are more orderly fermions.
#3. You know who likes big butts and cannot lie? These 100 million year old wasps that were trapped in Myanmar Amber. Because these wasps had a neat bug butt trick, which is maybe a tradeoff for not having a stinger back there? I don't know. I'm not a paleoentymologist. What they do: their butt opens wide with two big flaps, like a Venus flytrap, and then other bugs come and the butt snaps closed! Butts: is there anything they can't do?
#4. Orange cats are, we can all agree, the dumbest of the cats. I say that because my son has an orange cat and one day it knocked EVERY SINGLE GLASS AWARD MY BOOKS HAVE EVER WON onto the floor in a big shattered mess. The cat and I are not friends. Anyway, orange cats are a little weird, because they are almost always males, and no one has ever figured out WHY they’re orange. (Female cats with orange tend to only be patchy orange, like calico and such.) New research from Stanford University and Kyushu University in Japan have figured out that the orange color is produced by a tiny deletion in a cat’s X chromosome increased the activity of a gene called Arhgap36. This is interesting if you like cats. I think it's interesting because those two universities weren't working together but they both happened to discover the same thing at the same time. It's like when Armageddon and Deep Impact came out at the same time. Or Volcano and Dante's Peak. Anyway: science!
Distractions and Diversions
In this cooking video, J. Kenji López-Alt makes Migas, a Mexican breakfast that I really love. J. Kenji López-Alt is one of the gentlest, most affable people on the planet, and watching his cooking tutorials, whether they take 5 minutes or thirty, is like going into a Zen space.
LegalEagle is a channel run by lawyers that helps the public understand the law--both the law in current events, and the law in media. This video looks at how realistic My Cousin Vinny is--and the reason I chose this one is because LegalEagle says this legal comedy is one of the most realistic media portrayals of courts. Plus, the movie is funny and it's fun to watch the clips.
Move over Hot Ones, because my new favorite celebrity interview show is Mythical Kitchen's Last Meal series. They get a celeb and ask them to create the ideal last meal (it's usually many many courses long) for their last day on Earth, and then they interview them while eating. It's great! And who doesn't love Tom Hanks!
And that's it for this week. Click here to check out my website, and I'll see you next time.
