#Art in the Social Age of Digital Media
“A brilliant young writer, William Styron, recently remarked in effect
that this is not the lost Generation, but the subsidized one.
(There was never a lost generation of artists—that is only a cheerful myth, by the way).”
“Writing Cannot be Taught…” (1954). Katherine Anne Porter, Collected Stories and Other Writings.
I have been working on this essay about the state of the arts in our world for quite some time. Months. I have wanted to come up with one sentence that sums it all up, the one conclusion for which other sentences are created. I finally have it. It is this: social media has bent any possibility for anything actually innovative so out of shape that we can’t even recall the original shape pre-social-media to which social media was supposed to be the alternative.
I can’t believe the following words, “social media artist,” are real and maybe even something altogether separate from an actual artist. I suppose it should not come as a surprise since the term blogger replaced writers despite the fact that a lot of people blogging are not writers and a lot of writers don’t per se blog. The “twitter/social media artist” does not exist or so he or she believes without social media platforms which is no different than times before internet when a contemporary artist “did not exist” unless represented by a mainstream gallery or agency.
For some the extent of evolution has been as simple as consolidating several social media platforms into one space (not giving any credit to those who inspired them to do this or finally made it ‘click’ in their brain that something was not working), for others (the wiser of them) growing looks like finally no longer using these social media outlets for blasting information about their latest line drawing or photos of newly painted toe nails that may go unnoticed by loved ones in real life and instead actually providing some value to the social media swamp of curated information. Others have remained steadfast to why they signed on to social media in the first place, another way to have water cooler conversations and call them friendships. (Yet they just can’t figure out why is it then that they can’t sell anything? Irony alert: your audience is primarily other artists who also do not know what they are doing, at least in terms of business strategies which comes AFTER having a vision for your work BEYOND social media which even more ironically develops outside the confines of social media).
But what is this “artist” who went to art school or writing school to do? What about the ones who didn’t and feel insecure? He or she too just wants support, friendship, exposure and sales. He or she just can’t connect that the social media outlets are no different than the “real life” rejections and cliques they have encountered. Most importantly, that if he or she is actually going to do something different and if he or she has any real talent there may not be any real support by the so called “twitter writers and artists” (unless of course you are spending most of your time “liking” others’ developments to ensure reciprocity and that you can only do for so many and there goes the clique you didn’t want to be part of but you are and your world just got that much smaller).
Social media is not a short cut to achieve desired results, sales or exposure. Social media is a tool to expand and share what you are doing off line as an artist. No one but perhaps another beginner is interested in how far along you came today in your process or your own thoughts about your process. Viewers and collectors just want to buy. And most people like to see before buying, especially art because it is so personal. Art is to be experienced. If you have to tell me what it is that you are trying to do, you really need to go back to art school, this time the real one, called LIVING. Art takes time. Learning takes time. A lot of it can’t happen when you are on the stage focused on performing. Majority of the artists and writers online are beginners—this includes people who have been creating for 10 years, including myself! (I have been writing since I was eight, but I have been writing full time since 2009 regardless of full time or part time work and what I share here is a very small spectrum albeit it the most organized one).
What were you doing BEFORE social media to create and promote your art and writing? You were writing/making art before then right? Just making sure, because an artist is not dependent on an audience although he or she certainly appreciates a sincere one. Did you talk about your art everywhere you went? How did that turn out for you? This is no different.
In the words of others since I am no “guru”:
Is it valuable to others, or only you?
Here is why social media isn’t the magic bullet for self-epublished authors.
Here is a nice reminder of typical social media start up archetypes and how so many people think doing anything but the actual work will get them somewhere.
And finally this, professionalism.
It’s okay if you as an artist or a writer desire wider exposure or better sales.
But that comes AFTER focusing your time and energy on the craft.
Remember, the turtle wins the race.
Except when it comes to actually being an artist, a real one, there is no race except against Father Time.
I have been utilizing this website since 2009. I have used it as a writing portfolio which has led to a collection of stories and now I feel it is best to use it as a blog perhaps. I am still contemplating this. The most important thing is to ask yourself, what is it that you are trying to do? And it is okay if you don’t know yet or once knew and it changed. But act like it changed, sit in the space of I-don’t-know-yet without some self-made urgency. Unfollow the hags who claim to be artists who take up all your emotional energy in self-serving ways. Have the guts to move forward with what you actually like instead of feeling pressured to stay connected to people you will never meet and even if you did it would just be one time and even in that one time you can’t possibly know them or may outgrow what they are trying to do but you still have to waste your time to “like” their art which is nothing new from what they were making a year ago on social media.
Supporting another in their process is not the same as encouraging mediocrity. What is it that you really like and why? What grips you? What no longer grips you? What value are you deriving by the connections you have yourself convinced that you need via another’s creativity.
Most importantly if anyone tells you that you have to join this or that or lick their art to have yours licked, give them a finger of compassion and know you are better than the darkness that is only in the head. Then go make your art. There are many ways to share it. If you are shy or feel inadequate in real life or any other legit reason but feel you can make “friends” online yet it isn’t helping your writing or art, see this as an opportunity to finally grow and push yourself beyond your limits by stepping off the grid and into whatever community is available to you. If you live in a really remote area, like I once did, then save up and drive from time to time. Create what you want to create. Use the social networks as you want. But stop whining when doing the same thing doesn’t lead to different results.
I do my best to not just curate others’ thoughts on writing (or anything!) on this web address of mine and instead think for myself, do my best to use my own imagination, and humbly offer something in my own words.
I don’t do this this as an attempt to place myself on the same pedestal made of Time as those who have carved the way for humanity thus far but because I understand the gift/burden/power/responsibility of words that comes through me, an insignificant yet powerful individual in the pool of an ever-growing population. Unless I feel helplessly compelled to borrow another’s words, which by the way is something anyone can do and does, including me, I work very hard to think for myself. After having spent days, if not weeks, struggling with the “right words” for the “right ideas” for “the right purpose,” I am offered a talisman from those before me just before I am about to give up altogether. Then I quote. After I have tried my best. This trying my best can’t happen if there is an imaginary urgency created by some network.
Many of my Sundays’ essays remarked on art and writing on several occasions because I have been astonished to discover how many so called artists are only familiar with quotes available via Goodreads and nothing beyond that or the other extreme where they share what they have read to show they know art via quoting famous artists ad infinitum without actually creating too. It’s exhausting for the viewer who is genuienly interested in creativity. I have nothing more to say on this subject.
I close my thoughts and the links with others’ thoughts with the following quote that predates the Internet.
Writing, in any sense that matters, cannot be taught. It can only be learned and learned by each separate one of us in his own way, by the use of his own powers of imagination and perception, the ability to learn the lessons he has set for himself. That is, if your intention is to try yourself out, to find whether or not you have the makings of an artist.
Since then [18 years ago in Michigan in 1936], the Writer’s Conference has become a thriving domestic industry: sure enough, there have been no miracles. The effect has been to increase by the thousands the number of those who write, and there is almost no writer so bad (or so good!) that he cannot find a publisher. […] Processions of publishers’ scouts visit the “creative writing” courses in hundreds of universities and colleges. Strolling bands of older critics, poets, novelists yearly ride circuit on writers’ conferences in dozens of colleges and universities. I dare say prizes, grants, fellowships for every kind of writing there is number yearly into hundreds. A brilliant young writer, William Styron, recently remarked in effect that this is not the lost Generation, but the subsidized one. (There was never a lost generation of artists—that is only a cheerful myth, by the way.)
[…]
And don’t worry, he will come, he always does. Usually only one or two in a century, now and then in a cluster or galaxy, in a well spring of richness, but he does not fail. In the present fevered rush to publish just anything and anybody, and all the critics hailing all writing on his own level of understanding as great, with books and poets of the year, of the month, of the hour, of the minute, we can get a little confused. Be calm. The real poet, the real novelist, [the real artist], will emerge out of the uproar. He will be here, he is even now on this way.
The history of literature, musical composition, painting shows there has never been a living in art, except by flukes of fortune; by weight of long, cumulative reputation, or generosity of a patron; a prize, a subsidy, a commission of some kind; or (in the American style) anonymous and shamefaced hackwork; in the English style, a tradition of hackwork, openly acknowledged if deplored.
[…]
There never has been, in any system, any guarantee of economic security for the artist, unless he took a job and worked under orders as other men do for a steady living. In the arts, you simply cannot secure your bread and your freedom of action too. You cannot be a hostile critic of society and expect society to feed you regularly. The artist of the present day is demanding (I think childishly) that he be given, free, a great many irreconcilable rights and privileges. He wants as a right freedoms which the great spirits of all time have had to fight and often do die for. If he wants freedom, let him fight and die for it too, if he must, and not expect it to be handed to him on a silver plate.
~ Katherine Anne Porter, from Collected Stories and Other Writings.
Social Media, a tool that has allowed us all to share how very creative human beings can be, is nothing but a tool. Even on a silver plate you have to put something regardless of how many come over for dinner.
