The hardest thing about being an artist

Also the most important thing.

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Weekly Three

HEAR: “All Night (Feat. Knox Fortune)” by Chance the Rapper

READ: “Guardians of Memory” by Fred Bahnson, in which he embarks on a quest with a Catholic monk to save ancient manuscripts.

VIEW: The Dunning-Kruger effect. The takeaway? Keep going.

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No. 85: The hardest thing about being an artist

I’ve never explained the new name of this newsletter, so as this week’s super brief post, here it goes. 

Previously called matt, I changed the name to Internet Dance Club when I moved to Substack as my publishing platform. There are a few minor reasons before the main. It’s fun. It’s weird. It mentions the word “internet,” making it automatically modern. And it’s a “club,” which hopefully provokes the intrigue of potential subscribers eager to see what the hell this thing is all about. (I wish them luck).

But the main reason has to do with something George Saunders wrote in his book A Swim in a Pond in the Rain. He uses dancing as an analogy for writing.

Let’s say there was a wrist-mounted meter that could measure energy output during dancing and the goal was to give off an energy level of 1,000 units. Or someone would (say) kill you. And you had a notion of how you wanted to dance, but when you danced that way, your energy level was down around 50. And when you finally managed to get your energy level above 1,000, you glanced up at a mirror (there’s a mirror in there, wherever you’re dancing off death) and—wow. Is that dancing? Is that me dancing? Good God. But your energy level is at 1,200 and climbing. What would you do? You’d keep dancing like that.

I love that. To me, it says, Hey, stop trying so hard. Just vibe. Just jam. Just do what feels right, and that’s something I need to hear and remember as a young and very malleable writer trying to pave my own way. Really, I think it’s something everyone needs to hear. Stop doing what you think you should. Do what feels right to you. 

The meat of George’s wise ‘n weird quote, with some self-added paraphrasing? “You had a notion of how you wanted to [write], but when you [wrote] that way, [it sucked].”

So true, George! So true. 

For me that notion comes from the things I’ve read before. I love me some Hemingway, some Saunders, some Canetti, for example. But only Hemingway can Hemingway, Saunders can Saunders, and Canetti can Canetti. The reason I and so many others love the work of those writers is because they are being perfectly-imperfectly themselves. What originates from the mysterious depths of ourselves is guaranteed to be original, authentic, and pure.

Critics seem to echo a common sentiment when gushing about the work of masters like Hemingway or Frank Lloyd Wright. They say, It’s as if he never read a book before writing one! or It’s as if he never noticed the design of any other building before designing one! In less exclamatory terms, the work of these artists is so original that it apparently neglects the bodies of work that came before them. They are like aliens dropped onto the surface of the earth who, without stopping to survey the scene, started writing books and designing houses. This concept squarely negates the notion that one should “read before writing” or study art before creating. Instead, it goes full Nike on our asses. Just do it. What’s “it”? Only one person can say. You. 

It’s so simple and yet so hard to just be your freaking self. The irony is that the moment you start being yourself is when you start getting to the good stuff. Internet Dance Club reminds me to dance (write) in my own way, because that’s the best way. And being a club, in the best case scenario I can encourage the people who read this letter to also be themselves in all that they do.

Internet Dance Club is a whole bunch of us on out there on dance floor, moving and shaking and freaking and spinning and dancing in our own unique ways, finally free of all the notions that have been leading us astray. ♦

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