Aboard the tidal wave...

I hit a snag this weekend and it’s bumming me out. I should really let myself celebrate that I did a complete set of art pieces for the book – one for each chapter – just as I said I must do, before going back through and redoing any of them. The next step seemed like a breeze: simply scanning them all into my computer and test printing them.

Sounds super easy, right? Except that apparently my printer has the lamest scan feature in history of scanning from a home printer. Initially I tried to scan at 1200 dpi, because you know, DAT RESOLUTION. Except that my scanner just went nope, you don’t need that, 1200 dpi is too many dpi for you, I’m shutting you down.

Fine. 600 dpi then. I’m not going any lower. And my scanner said, alright, you can have 600 dpi, but I’m going to take half-a-fucking-hour just to scan one art, and then I’m going to disconnect from your computer because wireless communication between devices should always be spotty at best. And then you’re going to have to troubleshoot the fuck out of me to get me back online to scan the next art, and then I’m going to take half-a-fucking-hour for that one too…

Two. That is the total number of arts I managed to scan into my computer on Friday night over more hours than it should have taken. Commence OPERATION PROJECT DERAIL and me laying on the couch eating all the carbs and watching movies I’ve seen 17 billion times, leading to a hefty levelling of my perceived self-worth by Sunday night.

I’m back on it tonight. Not the couch, smart ass. The scanning. At least another two, if I can make myself stay up that late, haha. But this has gotten me thinking about another project I had going early in the year that I ended up abandoning. I had a really good reason for giving up on that one. It was basically doomed from the very start. 

First of all, the title sucked donkey balls and I couldn’t think of a better one. Lark for Lark’s Sake. Are you fucking kidding me? I like to believe that I could do better than that, but nope. 

It was going to be a story-told-with-poetry kind of a thing, with some art too. About an invisible girl (named Lark, obviously) who has an invisible art gallery. Because no one can see her, she doesn’t have a lot of friends, so she mainly talks to one of her paintings, a cat, who is responsive in the way you would imagine an invisible painting of a cat to be – that is, responsive only to the protagonist herself.

Lark’s pretty bummed about being invisible, as you can imagine. What value does a person have if they are unseen by others? What’s the point of doing or making anything? But one day some weird ass talking cartoon elephant creature walks into her gallery and takes her on a trip that shows her that every piece of art she has ever made does have a place in the universe – in the big art gallery in the sky, so to speak. All the arty things that have ever been made by anyone ever, are all there. All the music, all the paintings, all the books, all the films, everything that was ever made by anyone ever who just wanted to tell a story or express themselves, complete outsiders and unknowns amid the famous works of art. There’s a whole dimension devoted just to children’s art. Pretty rad place.

And there next to the Mona Lisa is Lark’s cat painting.  Her other works are there, too. They’re sort of dotted near and far all over the place, on a grid of membranous walls. So what does she learn? That it doesn’t matter if anyone can see her art. What matters is that in this magical place, her art has equal value to the Mona Lisa. And this place has an important function in the world. All art has matter and that means every time something new is created, the very fabric of the universe is changed, and the particles that comprise that art, no matter how revered it might be in the physical world (or not, as the case may be), influence the creation of new things. By extension, Lark herself has value because she exists, even if no one can see her.

So it sort of seems like I gave Lark a happy ending, but really, it's the saddest ending. Because what it meant was that if I finished the book, that to be true to itself, I'd have to keep it to myself. If I made it available for consumption by other people, it negates the whole hypothesis (yes, hypothesis -- I'll come back to that in a sec) that the thing I made has value just because it exists. It would be hypocritical of me to then expect people to pay for it, or even see it. The paradox of invisible art.

So yeah, the hypothesis of value based on existence. You see, there’s a line of thinking out there that is pretty much embraced by everyone in the motivational/inspirational community, that you should give no fucks about what anyone thinks of you. That it isn't even any of your business what anyone thinks of you. Okay, that's a fair point, I grant you that one. And I admit that what I'm about to say sounds bleak, but I just want to put it out there. Devil's advocate and all of that.

Back in January I was feeling kind of blue. I think I was sad that I had spent a year and half making something that I loved and that I put so much of heart and soul into, and now it existed, but no one beyond my immediate circle of people knew about it and I didn't know what to do about that.

I was also going through a bit of insomnia, probably related. And one thing I've learned over the years is that I am a mess without sleep. One night without sleep, I can deal. Beyond that, more than one night without sleep, the really unhappy, irrational thoughts start up. And I had been unable to sleep for about a week, and I was having a bunch of these thoughts, and it suddenly felt like I had figured out some kind of truth, the key to the universe... it all made so much sense that I had to write it down.

Here's a passage from the "text" (haha):

"All the talk about being your true, authentic, bad ass glittery self is bullshit. The idea that it doesn't matter what other people think of you is bullshit. Your identity is not formed by your own opinion of yourself, it is formed by others' opinions of you. We are social animals. Thus it doesn't matter how you see yourself or present yourself to the world. It only matters how others see you, who they think you are.

It's fine if you don't care how others see you. But that doesn't change the fact that you don't get to pick your identity, they do. You can be who you want to yourself, but when you are dead, your identity is 100% what other people remember about you. That's what you leave to world. You don't own your identity or your contribution one bit."

The essay went on for quite some length, some of it utter gibberish, some of it super depressing, some of it just stupid. But this little hypothesis has sort of stayed with me, as if maybe there really is something to it. I dunno, I guess the whole idea of "Fuck what everyone else thinks of you" is just as preposterous to me as the idea that everything happens for a reason. I can't be the only person who feels this way, can I?

(Ending with a request for validation, how fitting, lol).