On the "tortured" artist.
I'm reading an interview between Neko Case and Sherman Alexie, and just came up on this splendid portion I wanna share, for whoever's interested:
NC: [...] artists have to be completely tortured to do anything good. I hate that stereotype, too. It's destrructive.
SA: It's partially torture. [Laughs]
NC: Yeah.
SA: But people encourage their own torture, or perpetuate their own torture.
NC: It's more like giving-birth torture, which is good. Like, you have to push the idea to where it's a little bit painful for you, as in "I don't wanna work on this anymore!" But you need to keep on to have the breakthrough, and then you're like "Yes! I feel killer! I've made it to the next level!"
SA: The process is painful. Your whole life doesn't have to be.
Fucking gold, and something we oughta all keep in mind. I'll fully and freely admit that I have bouts of feeling down and out, more than a few especially recently, but I try not to be a whiney bitch 24/7 about how much my life sucks and I have my life rawrawrnegativity, especially since I have to be around enough of those bitches on the day-to-day anyway. Of course there're also some pretty awesome bitches too, I'll throw out; otherwise we'd've all killed each other some time past, I believe ^^
But I feel an upwind, even if there's some torrential interference now and then. I'm this close to finishing a new draft of a short story I've written through once already called "Death Stalks Jun Ki"; this time there's some better description and a couple of new scenes and shit. I've been at it periodically but especially so in the past two days, making myself keep at it because I am a bit of a slacker; and I might've finished it yesterday because I was rained out of work, except since I was rained out of work I was feeling a tad frisky, and went to town on my roommate's punching bags. Turns out, you spend half an hour or more whaling on a punching bag, your hands don't exactly want to cooperate holding a pen after, haha.
(Course that story'll probably get at least a third run-through eventually. I'm trying to invoke perception of light and shadow and masculine and feminine, and got a book revisiting those latter principles in Jungian psychology, that I plan on reading soon. But first, I gotta get through this biography on Atatürk, and I have about 400 pages left on that Young Turk XP)
Good Sunday to all of you! I'd throw something out here about the Super Bowl, but I don't currently have TV.
NC: [...] artists have to be completely tortured to do anything good. I hate that stereotype, too. It's destrructive.
SA: It's partially torture. [Laughs]
NC: Yeah.
SA: But people encourage their own torture, or perpetuate their own torture.
NC: It's more like giving-birth torture, which is good. Like, you have to push the idea to where it's a little bit painful for you, as in "I don't wanna work on this anymore!" But you need to keep on to have the breakthrough, and then you're like "Yes! I feel killer! I've made it to the next level!"
SA: The process is painful. Your whole life doesn't have to be.
Fucking gold, and something we oughta all keep in mind. I'll fully and freely admit that I have bouts of feeling down and out, more than a few especially recently, but I try not to be a whiney bitch 24/7 about how much my life sucks and I have my life rawrawrnegativity, especially since I have to be around enough of those bitches on the day-to-day anyway. Of course there're also some pretty awesome bitches too, I'll throw out; otherwise we'd've all killed each other some time past, I believe ^^
But I feel an upwind, even if there's some torrential interference now and then. I'm this close to finishing a new draft of a short story I've written through once already called "Death Stalks Jun Ki"; this time there's some better description and a couple of new scenes and shit. I've been at it periodically but especially so in the past two days, making myself keep at it because I am a bit of a slacker; and I might've finished it yesterday because I was rained out of work, except since I was rained out of work I was feeling a tad frisky, and went to town on my roommate's punching bags. Turns out, you spend half an hour or more whaling on a punching bag, your hands don't exactly want to cooperate holding a pen after, haha.
(Course that story'll probably get at least a third run-through eventually. I'm trying to invoke perception of light and shadow and masculine and feminine, and got a book revisiting those latter principles in Jungian psychology, that I plan on reading soon. But first, I gotta get through this biography on Atatürk, and I have about 400 pages left on that Young Turk XP)
Good Sunday to all of you! I'd throw something out here about the Super Bowl, but I don't currently have TV.