C R E A T O R
Junk Drawer Journals #2
There is a difference between an artist and a “content creator.” Artists are producers by definition, especially in relation to their work. Content creators make their work for consumers, often from a consumer’s perspective. I’m thinking of restaurant bloggers, TV reviewers, podcasters, even talking heads on the news. I recognize the irony of me being among this group at times, especially here on my own website, but the bulk of my time is spent making art in some capacity.
Most “content” is glorified digital marketing aimed at consumers – here’s why you should buy or share my stuff. I’m using broad strokes here, but I think it’s an important distinction to make. How many “think pieces” have entered the cultural hall of fame? How many listicles are compelling enough to read more than once? Did anyone ever write a dissertation about @mommyblogger321’s Letterboxd review of Boss Baby?
Art, by comparison, is more than that — compelling on its own, without need for branding in the same style. Of course particular artists can carry their own cache, a brand of value based on their names (Picasso, Van Gogh, etc) but a true masterpiece is valuable even when its creator is unknown. It becomes required viewing, can enter scholastic curricula, and demands you return to experience it again.
My work as a performing artist is by its nature only temporary. Sure, I can record myself onstage, but in the process something important is lost. It is difficult to define in a word, but there are so many variables that factor into any given performance that the risk is gone when listening to even the best recording. The listener or viewer cannot hear the natural overtones of my voice, they can’t see the saliva projecting with my voice to fill a space. They can’t smell the scene. The biggest benefits are the ability to avoid the disruptions (and sometimes the smells) of a live audience – ringing cell phones, crying babies, sneezes, and (heaven forbid) an unwrapping peppermint. The recording loses the ephemerality of attending a performance.
My art is urgent, time-sensitive on a level rarely felt in an age of on-demand delivery. If you don’t see this tonight, you will never get another chance. Never. No maybes about it. Hi-Fidelity equipment can never capture all the energy vibrating through the performance hall. A video stream washes away the strength of the performance. When you see a live performance, there is always a huge risk that everything could fall apart. The actors could completely bomb it, the power could go out, any number of possibilities, but the show must go on. It must. You’ve paid money and shown up. There are no refunds for your time.
The person in the row ahead might be too tall for you to see everything.
The person next to you may smell a distinctly unpleasant odor, or the opposite may be true.
But it is your experience and yours alone.
Once while I was acting in a college production, dip spilled everywhere during the performance. The scene required the dip, so it was always there through many rehearsals and other performances, and we never had any problems. On this night, something was different. We opened the dip, and it exploded everywhere. On the furniture, on the floor, all over us actors. We didn’t stop the show; we pressed on. However, we did take a few moments to breathe and try not to break character (which was extraordinarily difficult). The audience was invested with us though, and didn’t want or expect us to break and clean up. We did it in character (one actor even licked the dip off his arm while in a dialogue). It was one of the single most fun performances of my career because things went awry.
This is risky business.
Let’s think of it through another lens: imagine hiking up a quiet mountain. Your camera may be lucky enough to capture a fish jumping, a bird flying overhead, or even a snake or bear, but no one else will ever get to experience that exact moment in time. That precise collection of circumstances will never happen in that same sequence ever again.
I hope you, my dear reader, will heed this instruction now: take a deep breath, look around you for ten seconds. What would you have missed had you not taken that time to connect with your surroundings? What shapes jumped out at you? Maybe nothing noteworthy, but maybe you stole a glance at a hummingbird frozen mid-air, or watched someone sneeze. There is a lot of force behind a sneeze. Imagine what you miss every time you stay home and skip a live experience made to stimulate your creative senses.
My message is to get out of your house as soon as possible. Visit a museum. See a play. Go hear your local symphony concert. Take a hike. Whatever you do, the things you absorb there will be unique to you in a physical sense. Your ears will hear sounds completely different from the person in the seat next to you. The sound waves will, however slightly, hit your ear drums at a wavelength all their own. Acoustically, each performance space is built different, as the kids say, some better and some worse than others. Your eyes will be attracted to their own special vantage point; there are so many things to notice at an arts event if you look hard enough.
For the artist, all the same sensations occur, often more extremely. Consider the time it takes to rehearse for a performance. Actors, singers, dancers, painters all live with their work for over a month on average. Art can infect your whole life while you mold yourself to your creative mind’s vision. It’s an intoxicating kind of stress, but the payoff of an emotionally moved audience is mystifying. Once in a lifetime, but it can feel like it lasts forever in the moment. Nothing exactly the same again, but all artists keep chasing that feeling again and again, insatiably. It’s addictive.
I don’t think content creators get anywhere close to that kind of thrill.
More than all of these things, a live performance is deep, layered, nuanced. A painting cannot capture the struggle it took the artist to create it, mixing the colors to just the right hue. Even less so is a photograph of the piece. In person, there are no pixels, the light can change the emotions that are conveyed. The pieces around the painting are curated to influence your interpretation of it. A recording cannot radiate the social tension of an actor making themselves uncomfortably vulnerable. In the arena, you can feel electricity as your senses are excited. Even an awkward feeling is enjoyable when it comes from a once-in-a-universe experience.
