heart’s desire
I feel the most relaxed when wandering about places familiar and unknown. As I drift from place to place making landmarks out of terrain fragments my thoughts crystallize and clarity is obtained. I applied this same approach to my career. I was gonna taste test all the career paths I could without becoming an "X flavor" guy for too long. I didn’t realize I lacked the luxury of applying that approach to my life. I spent my twenties bouncing around from set to set playing different roles on any given project. Digital Tech one day, photographer the next. I was a year removed from SVA scraping together a living from day rates ranging from $350 to $1,500 (nasty). Building a foundation on a range that vast is like building a house atop of quicksand but I didn't know better. I didn't have a boss and that seemed like an early victory. My predecessors were starving artists and I was stuffing my face with second lunches, so I was up! Until I wasn't...
I was down way before the the phone stopped ringing. My waning interests in vector-scopes and look up tables spelled the end for me before my baby brain could realize it. "Fill the hole of misplaced passion with gear," I thought. A Mac Pro here, a new monitor there, sneak a lens in through the back door. I was drunk on unboxing endorphins and eventually tumbled down a debt ditch. Somehow the art trade begun to feel like a job and not a super rewarding one. How could that be? I thought all art work was good art work. Better than corporate work at least. There's no way a photoshoot with an upcoming musician or look book session for an indie menswear brand could be a drag. I was wrong, but how could I have known. I was just following in the footsteps of my predecessors. Predecessors who came to in a world much different than mine.
The artist path that they spun folktales on at SVA doesn't exist anymore and charting a path to freelance success with a trade like photography, sculpting or painting feels more precarious than ever. What I learned too late was the power of specificity. I spent many years being the youngest guy in the room surrounded by adults who told me I was further ahead than they were at my age because I knew what I wanted to do. But I didn't. I thought I did but my vision lacked the specificity required to avoid certain pitfalls, and of course it did! I was so young, I didn't know myself enough to know how to nourish myself. I was trying to min/max my life by trying everything to ensure I was experiencing “the best” life but my vision of that life wasn’t even my own. I needed to determine what I wanted out of life, so I could chase it with clarity and intention. This clarity was vital to stave off distractions and short term wins that ultimately lead to long term losses. Now... what the hell did I want with my life?
“I wanted to be the “one for them, one for me,” guy so badly but I couldn’t connect to the end goal on most sets I stepped on.”
What I was after wasn’t a thing, accolade, or social status tier, it was freedom. When I was young I thought freedom was making your own hours and being able to fire a client, and it is! But that freedom isn’t the most valuable form of freedom for me, artistic freedom is. I didn’t know what that looked like until I did enough jobs to know what its absence felt like. The perversion of my passions for hollow endeavors was tough for me to deal with. It's not that I thought my personal work was so fucking precious and avant garde but it was mine, so my lizard brain had to love it. I wanted to be the “one for them, one for me,” guy so badly but I couldn't connect to the end goal on most sets I stepped on. I began walking away from jobs and rarely wanting to pick up a camera. Some would describe this as the necessary ego death on the road to becoming a working pro and they're right. I guess I wasn't willing to sacrifice the joy for funds. The joy that came from being a working pro felt designed to impress other people rather than fuel my intellectual curiosity and emotional needs. If I couldn't find the joy I was destined to be one of two things: 1) A depressed pro drying tears in dollar bills or 2) A starving artist. Insert my final pivot.
I've been working in the games industry for nearly six years now. While the games biz can be brutal and all consuming, it's tied to a lifelong passion of mine and is the marquee art form of our time. I've nabbed a sweet gig that allows me the room to explore my creative passions uninhibited. I take pictures of rocks now! Waves too! Half of the shots are blurry...ON PURPOSE! It's bizarre and I have no idea if any of it is "good," but it's teaching me a lot about me, particularly how I see. Being a starving artist is shit and so is the myth that great art only comes from great suffering. Great art comes from great depths. Depth of feeling, reflection, and investigation. It's easier for me to sink into those depths from stable footing. I have a very noisy brain, so noisy in fact that my doc wants me to take meds for it.
Many artists find my approach to be subpar. "You can't maximize your potential if you spend most of your time working for someone else!" I would counter with I don't work well when the threat of homelessness is looming over my head! This approach works for me. It may not for you. I think we must all discover how we create and learn best. If you're a kid from the projects like me you'll have less time to explore than those surrounding you. Don't waste what little time you have battling inherited expectations. Don't do what I did. Explore you. And when you find out what feeds you, chase it furiously because this may be your only shot.