Cultural References
From Alyssa Brandt in The New Yorker, What Does Writing Smell Like?
I was on my way to Everything Mason Jars one day when I saw a fancy-candle store. I’ve been wanting a fancy candle for some time, so I popped in.
Sandra (not her real name): Hi, welcome to Everything Candles! We have a hundred different fragrances. I’m Sandra. Can I help you?
Me: Do you have a candle that smells like writing?
Sandra: What does writing smell like?
Me: Ozone, maybe? With top notes of burning, or metal, or burning metal. Or an electrical fire. Live wires sparking and smoking. Solder? Something that blends the flash of an idea and the slow burn of wrestling it into something real. Something that will get me fat stacks or fame. Do you have anything that smells like that?
Sandra: I’m not sure. . . . We have one that smells like cotton…
When someone asks you “what do you do?” how do you answer? “I’m a software programmer at Allied Technology,” or “I’m a Market Analyst for Dewey, Cheatham, and Howe,” or "I’m a drywaller.” I suppose it is easy to identify yourself by your profession and your job title. This is the label that you have that is validated by outside sources. Other possible answers are “I’m a homemaker,” or “I’m a full-time parent,” or “I’m retired.” These are all state-approved titles for what we are as human beings. “I’m the Sales Guy,” or “he’s the tech guy at Dunder Mifflin.”
But answer the question “I’m a writer,” or “I’m an artist,” or “I’m a musician,” and it seems pretentious as hell, and people tend to look at you funny. It is hard to self-identify as an artist, especially if your main income source is from waiting tables or generating spreadsheets.
Some people come by self-promotion easily. I am reading a biography of Orson Welles, and the author recounted something one of his publicists wrote back in the ‘40s:
Orson Welles was born on May 6, 1915. After only a few days he uttered his first words: “I’m a genius!”
We hesitate saying that, right? “I’m a genius!” “I am a writer!” “I’m a photographer!” “I’m an artist!” But we are. And I think it is important to acknowledge it.
Here’s the thing about imposter syndrome: we know who and what we are, pretty much. We know we are not perfect. We know we have flaws. We know how hard it is to put something great together - or even something mediocre. We know that we are not there yet - wherever there is. And then we measure ourselves against perfection, or compare ourselves with people or things that are great. And we find ourselves wanting.
I know in my case when I say “I’m a writer,” the hesitancy is that I think to myself, “am I really a writer? I mean, read Dickens, or E. B. White, or Hemingway - they are writers. Me? I’m not that.” But we miss the point, which is that Dickens is not E. B. White, who is not Hemingway, who is not Twain. And, that underneath the edifice of the greatness of their work lies… we don’t know. We see the work, but we don’t see the blood, sweat, and tears that went into making it. Just like in Facebook, we measure our lives and our art against everyone elses’ highlight reels. And on top of that, we already have the works of these artists. We don’t have your works yet.
In last Tuesday’s Pivot podcast, Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway interviewed art critic Jerry Saltz. I vaguely remembered his name in passing and I had never read his work or heard him interviewed. In the interview he said “Art is the most advanced operating system our species has ever devised to explore consciousness, the seen & unseen world and to embed thought in material.” He went on to advocate that people should do art, even if it is not good. He backed into encouraging art by acknowledging that we will probably be awful, but who cares? Do it anyway. It is what we do.
I decided to look into Saltz a little deeper, and I came across the fascinating article “How to Be an Artist” on Vulture from a few years ago, where he gives 33 rules for becoming an artist. Lesson 1 is Don’t be embarrassed. He addresses the imposter syndrome head-on in this first rule:
When I work, I feel sick to my stomach with thoughts like None of this is any good. It makes no sense. But art doesn’t have to make sense. It doesn’t even need to be good. So don’t worry about being smart and let go of being “good.”
This is the launching point, according to Saltz: Don’t be embarrassed, just do it. He also has as his last rule (Rule 35 - it was an add-on) Fake it till you make it. There is no getting around this rule. The catch 22 of all endeavors is that you are never ready to do something new, but you must do new things. Experience by definition means having done the work before. How do you get experience? You do the work, ready or not, and you figure it out. No one starts off with experience. So, screw it, do it!
The whole article is great, and long, and there is a lot in it. I will probably do some of his exercises myself. I found all the rules fascinating.
And by the way, if you do it, you are it. Embrace it, and don’t be embarrassed or feel you need to justify or explain it. You’re an artist, full stop.
I. Youth and Precision: Eleanor Powell and Fred Astaire
I rewatched a video of Eleanor Powell and Fred Astaire dancing to “Begin the Beguine,” that great Cole Porter song, and I was taken by the contrast between them. It is a beautiful thing to watch. The video is from the movie “Broadway Melody of 1940.” Astaire was usually paired with Ginger Rogers, and they were perfect together: they were both precise, and both smooth as silk. But in this case, he was dancing with Powell, and she was amazing. Eleanor Powell had a whole different style from Fred Astaire. She is the personification of youthful abandon, while Astaire is the personification of precision and perfection. Powell’s dancing is so free and relaxed and she seems like she just happened upon Fred Astaire, and decided to start dancing. And yet, every step is perfect. It looks like she was doing this all her life. It is a remarkable contrast: the carefree exuberant young woman and the master mechanic.
Her performance reminded me of one of my favorite poems, E. B. White’s “Song of the Queen Bee.”:
"The breeding of the bee", says a United States Department of Agriculture bulletin on artificial insemination, "has always been handicapped by the fact that the queen mates in the air with whatever drone she encounters.”
When the air is wine and the wind is free
And morning sits on the lovely lea
And sunlight ripples on every tree,
Then love-in-air is the thing for me—
I’m a bee,
I’m a ravishing, rollicking, young queen bee,
That’s me.I wish to state that I think it’s great,
Oh, it’s simply rare in the upper air,
It’s the place to pair
With a bee.
Let old geneticists plot and plan,
They're stuffy people, to a man;
Let gossips whisper behind their fan.
(Oh, she does?
Buzz, buzz, buzz!)
My nuptial flight is sheer delight;
I’m a giddy girl who likes to swirl
To fly and soar
And fly some more,
I’m a bee.
And I wish to state that I’ll always mate
With whatever drone I encounter.
I see Eleanor Powell dancing, and she is as ravishing and rollicking as that young queen bee on her way up into the rarified air looking for encounters with any old drone. In this case, the old drone is Fred Astaire. (Did I really write that? Buzz, buzz, buzz!)
II. Cultural References
I look at our journey through this life as all of us riding the peak of a wave, with everything happening now at the crest of the wave, and all that happens slipping down the wave behind us. We can look back and see ripples on the wave, ripples that are common experiences, and these ripples and common experiences fade and wallow behind us as we ride the wave of the present, until they eventually fade away. And so cultural references that are common to all of us now eventually fade away and become forgotten. A lot of it has to do with new generations coming along who never experienced these things directly - they popped up on the wave well after after the experiences slipped away behind the crest. And of course things that are now supplant things that are then.
A great example of this is from the Grammies last weekend: who the hell is this unknown blues singer Bonnie Raitt? How can anyone not know who Bonnie Raitt is? She is freaking brilliant. She is a legend, a queen. But look - we are in 2023, and people who were born in this century are old enough to drink and gamble now. Kids who care about pop music were not even born when she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, let alone when she first started charting.
Burt Bacharach passed last week. His music is a big part of my life, the leavening to the franticness of ‘60s and ‘70s rock and roll. But do the kids know about him? Hell no.
There are actually people seriously stating on Twitter and elsewhere that the Beatles are overrated. This is such an incredibly absurd comment. But, they don’t have the same experience with the Beatles that I do. Usually, when they get some exposure, they see the error of their ways. But what about, say, the Kinks? The Who? Elvis? The Doors? They’re great, and everyone should know about them, but not everyone will.
The thing is, the wave is tall. All the things happening are part of our “now” and our lives are lived, in the main, in the present. When now becomes then, which parts do we remember? What things are culturally significant, and what things fade away? The people who lived during the time bring it with them, because it is their life. To me, The Go-Go’s and the Specials, and the Cure are not old, but they did come out 40 years ago. Animal House was released in 1978 - 45 years ago. The Blues Brothers? 1980. “We’re on a mission from God.” I know what that means. How many kids know that now?
The Big Lebowski. “This aggression will not stand!” “Mark it 8, Dude!” 25 years ago. It won’t be long before some kid says, “The big what?”
Last week I wrote about Don Quixote. Is it tilting at windmills to try to buck human nature and highlight things remarkable that have faded from view? To say, hey! This is important, this is noteworthy, even if it is from decades ago? I think it is worthwhile to highlight great and remarkable things, but I also think that, A. not all things are remarkable, and B. it is inevitable that most things will fade away, no matter how remarkable they are. A hundred years ago, there were popular songs that we have no idea what they are, that everyone knew and loved. “Charleston?” “Collegiate?” Who was Paul Whiteman? Fred Waring? Everyone riding the crest of the wave in 1925 knew who they were, alright. And these are two songs I happen to know about. There were hundreds if not thousands of songs, movies, musicals, and books that are gone. Some of them literally, like the old acetate movie stock that crumbled in their storage cans, taking the movies with them.
There are two lessons we can take from this, depending on our state of mind: One is, nothing matters, who cares? why bother? We’re all on a hayride to the grave, and all things will fade to dust anyway, and the earth and the solar system will fall into the sun, and to chaos we shall return. That’s one lesson. The other is, we’re here now, embrace it! Sure we’re dancing on a burning platform, but we’re still dancing, and let’s go! There is pay dirt out there, and as long as we are breathing we are living, and as long as we are living we can find it. And, to all the people who are trying to make this place worse than it is, and who are screwing with our journey into eternity? Screw them. The older I get the more I realize, who cares about these jerks? Who cares what they think? Who cares what their opinions on “morals” are, or their opinions on anything? Freedom means freedom from people like these. We don’t have time for them. After all, the earth is going to spin into the sun! We have no time to waste! Carpe diem!
There is a third lesson: do what you need to do. Going back to the advice of Jerry Saltz, and, well, the mission of this newsletter: embrace your life, embrace your art. I am firmly convinced that whatever your art is, it is the most important thing you can do, besides encouraging your children and your significant other to do the same. And be kind, and help people.
III. Valentines Day
I’m publishing this edition on Valentine’s Day. I am a widower. I was with Jenny for 30 years, and 8 months. Every day was a blessing. If you are married, if you have “your person,” cherish the hell out of them. Once you bond with someone, you truly bond with them: you become one person, and you will not know how true that is until you lose them. So, part of embracing the “now” is embracing your significant other, and appreciating this beautiful relationship you have. Even if you get pissed off at each other, believe me, it is a beautiful relationship and you are lucky as hell to have each other.
Happy Valentine’s Day!