Getting it Wrong and Liking It

Trac Changes, a blog I basically want to copy + paste right here

recently reminded me of one of the most important things I learned 

from my favorite professor at Bing:

the freedom to fail gloriously.

As clowns and as actors

Professor Toomey

would remind us that there's nothing to learn

nothing to discover

in a small failure.Bigger is better.

And that to fail was not to lose,

but to learn another path towards success. 

A lot of time, as artists

(or human beings)

we expect to get it right the first time.

We want to be proud of everything we do.

I know that there's only so much time I'll spend on a drawing

before getting pissed off & giving up.

When I got the opportunity to sit with Bob Mankoff

he emphasised the importance for cartoonists

(and all artists) to draw and work and draw

and then work some more

on refining their style.

Because it's only through repetition that 

you're going to be able to reduce the world

to the essentials.

I was reminded of this when
 I listened to a 

"state of the artist" podcast from WNYC

where James Murphy described his creative "process"-

I also had this concept that I really liked called Good/Bad/Good. Like something that’s a good idea in that it’s a really bad idea, which kind of makes it a really great idea. Like it just kind of goes through things twice.

Or things that are like, you can say them as a joke, even. Or as an idea. Like oh, wouldn’t that be a funny idea. But then the gesture of actaully working through the problems of what would sometimes be a simple idea, but bringing them up on with as much labor as they take, something beautiful happens.

For me, it was always like, when we did the label, our record company we called “TFA Records”, which was just a series of terrible ideas that made everybody who worked there really happy- where we would be like [...] I had a meeting with my partner were we were like “We need a logo” and I drew a lighting bolt really badly with a ballpoint pen and wrote a little thing in the middle of it and we were like “well, okay, we could use that. And then we were like, no, we could just use that.” We did that, crappy, like we don’t get a designer to come and make that better. It’s not very big, it’s not going to blow up very well, perfect!

After doing this for long enough, we realized that, we had kind of kidded, as a means of making something that we wouldn’t let ourselves make if we had said “this is going to be art.” Like we had kidded ourselves into a place where we could be like [...] We had found we had made all these things that we really loved. And we did believe in them, and we knew they were bad. And that was part of what they were to us. That they weren’t pretty, and they weren’t - they were weirdly functional.

I don't think I write with the intention to collect a gigantic audience

I like being able to communicate with friends flung far and wide.

Blogging is just like the rest of the internet- I want people to be jealous of my life.

I worked at the public theater! I live in the best city ever!

So when my life isn't going exactly the way I planned, I don't blog at all.

Which is silly.

So let me fill you in.

The lease ran out and the roommate ran out with her boyfriend (damn him).

I went back to the parents house for a little while

and slung craft beers in a bar

that wasn't nearly as pretentious as it aspired to be.

I got pretty down, but my internet and sometimes real life best friend

reminded me to get my act together

and I took a wardrobe job out on Long Island.

I don't have a scanner

and I live pretty close to town

and a beach

and a state park

And I drive home every weekend

So the posting has been pretty sparse.

I'm still alive, though.

I've got plans of some things to tell you.

But I guess that's enough for now.

Field Trip: New Yorker Magazine

Tuesday at the New Yorker is cartoon submission day.

Through a friend of a friend, I got invited

to sit in the little couch room 

and eavesdrop.

The cartoonists were unilaterally

friendly.

Perhaps this is the one day a week

they let themselves out from behind their desks,

perhaps it was just a fluke.

But it was interesting to get to chat

with some people who make their living at being artists.

I also got to meet with Bob Mankoff.

I was terrified.

When  I got in the room, I found

Bob is personable and knife-edge articulate.

He likes to work with cartoonists and

really improve their work if he feels

they're worth publishing.

He feels that illustration is totally different
(and that Hirschfeld was a caricaturist,
which is also different)

and while there are some people who

cartoon as well as a few other things,

mostly he likes to publish people who 

submit a huge volume of work.

This is understandable: he probably doesn't want

a waiting room full of one-hit wonders

crowding his waiting room every week.

Is it a touch despotic?

Maybe. But maybe he wants to reward

whatever his version of hard work

and commitment is.

And to be perfectly frank,

he's the cartoon editor of the New Yorker.

He can do whatever the fuck he wants.





I brought a few examples of my work
and he described it as
'sinuous stick figures.'

He also mentioned that
some internet stuff is funny,
and some of it is crap,
but the NYer can't be as weirdly specific
as Feminist Ryan Gosling.


What did I learn overall?
I'm not going to be a cartoonist, at least while Bob is in charge.
I have massive respect for the work,
but slaving away at drawing gag cartoons
isn't for me.