Ignore Everybody - MacLeod, Hugh [10]
“Well, some of the fireplaces are real beauties,” I said. “It must be hard parting with them.”
“No, it isn’t,” he said (and this is the part I remember most). “I mean, I like them, but because they take up so much room—they’re so big and bulky—I’m relieved to be rid of them once they’re sold. I just want them out of the shop ASAP and the cash in my pocket. Selling them is easy for me. Unlike antiques. I always loved antiques, so I was always falling in love with the inventory, I always wanted to hang on to my best stuff. I’d always subconsciously price them too high in order to keep them from leaving the shop.”
Being young and idealistic, I told him I thought that was quite sad. Why choose to sell a “mere product” (e.g. chimneypieces) when instead you could make your living selling something you really care about (e.g. antiques)? Surely the latter would be a preferable way to work?
“The first rule of business,” he said, chuckling at my naïveté, “is never sell something you love. Otherwise, you may as well be selling your children.”
Fifteen years later I’m at a bar in New York. Some friend-of-a-friend is looking at my cartoons. He asks me if I publish. I tell him I don’t. Tell him it’s just a hobby. Tell him about my advertising job.
“Man, why the hell are you in advertising?” he says, pointing to my portfolio. “You should be doing this. Galleries and stuff. T-shirts!”
“Advertising’s just chimneypieces,” I say, speaking into my glass.
“What the hell?”
“Never mind.”
15. Dying young is overrated.
I’ve seen so many young people take the “Gotta do the drugs and booze thing to make me a better artist” route over the years. A choice that wasn’t smart, original, effective, healthy, or ended happily.
IT’S A FAMILIAR STORY: A KID READS ABOUT Charlie Parker or Jimi Hendrix or Charles Bukowski and somehow decides that their poetic but flawed example somehow gives him permission and/or absolution to spend the next decade or two drowning in his own metaphorical vomit.
Of course, the older you get, the more casualties of this foolishness you meet. The more time they have had to ravage their lives. The more pathetic they seem. And the less remarkable work they seem to have to show for it, for all their “amazing experiences” and “special insights.”
The smarter and more talented the artist is, the less likely he will choose this route. Sure, he might screw around a wee bit while he’s young and stupid, but he will move on quicker than most.
But the kid thinks it’s all about talent; he thinks it’s all about “potential.” He underestimates how much time, discipline, and stamina also play their part. Sure, like Bukowski et al., there are exceptions. But that is why we like their stories when we’re young. Because they are exceptional stories. And every kid with a guitar or a pen or a paintbrush or an idea for a new business wants to be exceptional. Every kid underestimates his competition, and overestimates his chances. Every kid is a sucker for the idea that there’s a way to make it without having to do the actual hard work.
So the bars of West Hollywood, London, and New York are awash with people throwing their lives away in the desperate hope of finding a shortcut, any shortcut. And a lot of them aren’t even young anymore, their B-plans having been washed away by beer and vodka years ago.
Meanwhile the competition is at home, working their asses off.
16. The most important thing a creative person can learn professionally is where to draw the red line that separates what you are willing to do from what you are not.
Art suffers the moment other people start paying for it. The more you need the money, the more people will tell you what to do. The less control you will have. The more bullshit you will have to swallow. The less joy it will bring. Know this and plan accordingly.
NOT LONG AGO I HEARD CHRIS WARE, CURRENTLY one of the top two or three most critically acclaimed cartoonists on the planet, describe his profession as “unrewarding.”
When the guy at the top of the