https://stoneburnerngp.bandcamp.com/
Hey… You… Goin online and tellin your friends how inspired you are… Sit your ass down… You havenât finished your last âproject.â Donât fuckin start the next one… You havenât earned that yet. You donât get to do that until your ratio of finished art is orders of magnitude higher then the potential pieces you want to start… Making good art isnât about working when you feel âinspired.â (Side note, fuck your âinspirationâ coming up with ideas is your job if youâre gonna do it, learn to come up with ideas… Iâll give you a simple trick after this rant.) Where was I? Right, stepping the fuck up… Hereâs the thing, youâre not finishing that piece, song, story, whatever… because youâre fuckin scared. Full stop. Youâre scared that it wonât be as good as what youâve got, that youâre going to ruin it, that someone is going to come along and say âyou donât know what youâre doing,â or âyou shouldnât be doing this,â or any number of bullshit fears your psyche is conjuring up. Stop that shit. Being an artist is work. Being âinspiredâ is a skill, like any other, itâs really just another world for âfeeling creative, motivated and horny for the potential that comes with a blank canvas,â you will find the more you work and exercise it the easier it is to find it when you are looking. Eventually you will get into a routine where itâs time to work, you sit down at your space and say âok, go!â And the shit will just come when called. Need ideas? Take advantage of your wetware… Your brain is a connection machine. Itâs evolved to connect A and C via B… Now, hereâs a stupid simple trick. Pick up a book, any book, a dictionary is good, or a tarot deck, whatever… Open it up to a pair of random pages, pick two words, figure out how those words, cards, picture connect. Play âwhat if,â with the ideas. If it doesnât work the first time, do it again. Thereâs literally no reason it wonât work eventually. Unless you are stupid or donât want it to. If youâre stupid, I canât help you, but Iâm sure you can find something good on TV to watch. And if you donât want to, why are you here reading this? Figure out what you want to do and stop asking me questions… Get off my back.. Oh, you wanna throw down?! I see how it is… SHOW ME WHAT YOU GOOOOOOT!!!â
I knew a dude who lived on potential. He would do a piece of art up to maybe 75% and then show his work off to everyone. And everyone would say âthatâs so good! I look forward to seeing it finished! Youâre so talented!â And he would take that cookie and eat it, and move on to the next piece so he could get that cookie again. He wouldnât bother finishing them because he had already eaten the cookie that he wanted. Because he didnât want to make good art, he wanted attention for being an artist. And if he finished it, he might get judged or may not be as good as people thought he was. Donât be that guy. Side note: we owned an art gallery at the time. In the hope of motivating him to finish a project, I said to him âok, you are showing here in three months I want 10 5×5 inch pieces for it.â When the time came he gave me 10 pieces, all of which were half assed sketches he had cut out of his sketchbook. They were half assed garbage and frankly I didnât want to show them because they were of such low quality. But we did, and they didnât sell, and no one cared… Because he hadnât focused on doing his best when a legit opportunity presented itself. He hadnât learned how to finish his work. That shit matters. Assuming you are doing it because the art is more important than âbeing a talented artist.â As a side note, that dude went on to get a job teaching art to kids, and heâs very good at it. Sometimes the path you think is the path is not what you need to be doing.
