004: Stats [and Feels]

‘It’s part of being an artist. You can’t create great stuff all the time, you’d be inhuman. The human side of people is that sometimes they fail.’ - Elton John

I could bore you with statistician-ish numbers of what I’ve shot since I moved to NYC, in my attempt to best my most productive year in photography in just the five months I’ve had a new Drivers License picture, but I won’t because the attempt was nothing more than an attempt at a humble brag that no one other than myself cares about, and then I would do nothing but try to best that number next year.

The quality over quantity argument is the longest tenured spiel of what I emotionally react to as the lazy artist. So some famous painter took three years to make a figure of light and shadow, but honey, we’re in 2018, and we’re at the 20 frames-a-second part of history now. 

So I shot a bunch this year. So I shot some of my best work this year. Did I though? How long do you have to sit on an image before you think it’s actually good or be objective about your own work? I’m perpetually torn between hoarding the images I make like a Chicago Nanny and pushing everything out into the world like a parent with a Flikr account. 

I did shoot more this year than any year previous. I created more technically good frames this year than any in previous years. I pushed myself creatively in ways I haven’t before, and the new year presents new opportunities to reset and refresh and throw myself against the tsunami of creative juices that flow through this city like the Slime River in GhostBusters 2.

[In case you can’t tell, I love metaphors, and creating comparative structures of reference, simply because I mentally do that in my everyday existence, as a way of coping with my ever so feeling out of place in this society. Like a formless robot, I apply so many new endeavors to a catalog of previous history and known pop culture references, which are nothing more than pseudo lives lived that I’ve adopted in a void of my real life attempts and seclusion. It’s how I attempt to relate to the world place we all share, live, love, judge, and operate in. I also think it shows cleverness and a humorist side of me, and Millennials are always in combat over individual cleverness because so many of us were nurtured on the teat of The Office. It’s also my personal attempt at out-vague-ing and losing the larger audience I may be speaking to. By getting more and more obscure, I’m speaking directly to a smaller number of human like creatures, but speaking more directly and passionately, and I love the road trip from accessible to niche.]

But am I sprinting through a marathon? Am I attempting to justify forgoing care and time for the numbers and hustle and bustle? Some dude said your first 10,000 images suck, and only after that do you start creating worthwhile work.  I shot one of my favorite images in the first four months I owned a DSLR, and in many ways my entire creative life has been just about chasing that dragon of recreating that moment with better gear, at a slightly better angle, with a more marketable release plan. Is the creative journey designed to be more than just a box check of 10,000 images and 10,000 hours and boom, you’re an Artist(TM)? Journeys are lot less interesting than declarations, which is why everyone says they watched all of the Lord of The Rings movies, and then conveniently leave out how shitty the middle of the second movie is, and how much a chore that was to drudge through. 40 pages of “walking” in the script isn’t sexy, but getting to the top of a mountain and conquering an evil deity is.  The creative life is similar, but our Eye of Sauron is a 9-5 job with a 401k.

The year ahead lies with doors I’m gonna break down with a hammer, or a chisel. Not sure yet. Maybe a flame thrower (do you know any billionaires marketing such a product?) I know I have to continue to destroy and rebuild, maybe because I read that somewhere that all art is just a rinse and recycle version of the all of this planet’s known creations, and I wired that somewhere next to the fuse panel of my brain’s interpretation of the art creation process.

I have a week or so before I finalize my Goal Set and Vision Plan for the Year of the Pig. This week is about shutting down, being proud of whatever I’ve accomplished this year, and taking a brief breather as the clock strikes midnight and we all enter over the threshold of Gregory XIII’s wacky idea. 

So over the next few days, as Americans navigate through the landmine that is What It Is, I get to sit back, binge some Angelina Jolie movies (Christmas in Jolie Marathon donchaknow) and figure out if the New Year’s focus will be less is more or more is more. 

Here’s some pictures of Feels (Union Pool, Brooklyn, NY)

NW: Life With Mikey

NL: “I Hope Your Band Goes Nowhere” - Talay

NR: I Must Say : My Life As a Humble Comedy Legend by Martin Short 

More tk….