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the problem with the arts
Sunday, March 24 2002
This morning Gretchen and I were talking about the upcoming Passover holidays and the mandatory seders I'll be expected to attend. In response to one of my slightly skeptical retorts, she offhandedly remarked, "I used to be such a good Jew." It didn't make any sense to me. "What's the point of being a good Jew?," I asked. Then, thinking aloud, I continued, "It's like being good at Scrabble." Only then did I understand.
My big chat development hassle of the day was memory leaks, specifically on the client side. Left to its own devices, the chat client would consume 100 Megabytes of memory and 90% of CPU resources after only an hour or two of operation. Something had to be done, but what? Searching the web on the subject of Macromedia Flash memory leaks yielded only this page, which said (in essence) that memory leaks in Flash are impossible. Unsatisfied with the information available on the web, I walked down to the Barnes and Noble on 7th Avenue and thumbed through the books on Flash. Some were better than others, and I was even tempted to buy a complete ActionScript reference. None of the books, however, had "memory" anywhere in their indices. Evidently memory is not supposed to be an issue for Flash.
As usual for a Sunday, I watched plenty of television tonight. And when I smell the whiff of cultural relevance, I pay special attention to the commercials. There he was, Tiger Woods, rolling up in some variety of terrorist-funding SUV, hoping to use his credibility and charisma to induce me to buy one. But I noticed something strange was going on though. There was, it seemed, a bit of a confusion about brand hierarchy if not loyalty. As usual, you see, Tiger was wearing a navy blue baseball cap with the white Nike insignia forming the mark of the beast across his forehead. Why had the SUV people permitted this shoe company's logo to intrude into their commercial? Evidently Tiger is bound by some sort of contract to Nike and, though free to promote other brands, must do so with a Nike logo emblazoned like a tattoo above his eyes. Come to think of it, would I even know that was Tiger Woods in the SUV commercial were it not for the Nike logo? For Tiger it is more than just a sponsor's logo, it's an identifying feature.
Tonight Gretchen was telling me about yet another exhausting dream she'd just remembered from last night. Such dreams are full of abuse, neglect, sexual harassment, and even, on occasion, dead bodies. They go on for hours and hardly allow for a restful night's sleep. She wanted to know where they came from. Were they chemical? Genetic? Environmental? A consequence of the nature of our relationship? Perhaps they're triggered by Noah scratching on the window and demanding to be let out at 6:00am every morning. Or maybe they're a manifestation of the stress of trying to succeed in the poetry world, a world fat with rejections and starved of accolades. Trying to succeed as a poet is not a job for the overly-sensitive. Worse yet, it isn't especially conducive to the writing of good poetry. "Why can't I write anymore?" Gretchen asked. "Am I waiting for affirmation? Because I would hate to be like that!" she said. "I used to write poetry just for the love of the words, never thinking about publication, 'success,' or other people passing judgement. But it's different now. I feel like I have to be part of the scene and talk to the right people and make the right connections if I want to be published."
This led to a discussion about the single biggest problem with pursuing an art: the profound difference between making art and promoting it. These two activities are very different from each other, and being excited about one usually means being uninspired about the other. The problem is that once people start telling an artist that his work is amazing and that he should enter it into this and that, the artist graduates (in a series of imperceptible stages) from artist to self promoter. It's impossible for an artist to go back to the humble roots from which he sprang.
As a solution to this fundamental problem with the arts, I suggested that Gretchen compartmentalize her inner-personalities, giving each its fair share of her time, but not letting any one of them gain the upper hand. Sure, some days it's good to be Gretchen the self-promoter, mailing out stacks of submissions to poetry reviews and glad-handing poetry big wigs at poetry cocktails. But other days she should go back to being Gretchen the poet, unconcerned about the stuffy pretentious poetry world and its reaction to her work.
I explained to her that this is what I myself have to do, just for the personalities that like to use the computer, since they all can't use it at once. There's Gus the programmer, Gus the article reader, Gus the obsessive stats checker, Gus the satirical page writer, and Gus the Randomly Ever After contributing editor. Believe it or not, hidden away in there somewhere and sustained on a diet of Wonder Bread and diet caffeine-free Pepsi, there's even a Gus who likes to see what's up at Nova Notes and other fine breeder-goth S&M sites.
Still, the comparison between what I do at a computer and what Gretchen does with poetry is somewhat unfair. You see, though they feel like artwork to me, the programs I write are not pure æsthetic and they don't simply hone my marketable skills, they're potentially marketable commodities. My knowledge of this fact lends considerable support to my efforts, even though I am a firm advocate of open source and the repeal of copyright laws. Poetry, on the other hand, only makes money when Oprah Winfrey draws attention to it. As art forms go, there are probably few less lucrative. A poet must love her work far more than a programmer loves his.
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