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Tuesday, 20 February 2007
Fuck Artistic Suffering - Get Me On Letterman
Let us talk about art. We shall keep the capital letter off that because we don't want this discussion to be mistaken for a discussion on Art, which is actually about commerce and very little to do with art.
Art is very big on my mind at the moment. Since my last post I have been wrestling with demons, all artistic (and, paradoxically therefore, some commercial) and never seem as far forward as I'd like to be. However, I'm running a risk of this blog being empty for three months if I don't get back on the horse so here I am.
So, my demons…
Well, here is where I am right now – at a BIG crossroads. DANNY has pulled in its collective breath and is about to EXHALE – big time.
At the time of the last post I had just finished my second edit of DANNY V2.
Between my family letters, then my brother's predictable Seven Stages to Kit Kat in A Car response (I'll elucidate on that some day), all the while with trolls traipsing around exhibiting human behaviour at its lowest, I began to wonder what the hell I was doing this for.
DANNY edits are, by necessity, long and gruelling. They involve long hours, heightened concentration, sore necks and a lot of cursing at stupid authors who write books without cast-iron ideas of where they are going. Funnily enough I never blame the characters for hijacking the story, which they frequently do. I am overindulgent to the whims of my characters. I think I need to be more Presbyterian with them.
I was tired, disheartened and disillusioned. Art was being hurt by too much extraneous wounding. It'll do that to the tender old artistic soul, you know. We're sensitive little sprites.
In my angry moments I can do sulks with the best of them. Trouble is I find sulking a very unattractive trait. I hate it in myself even more than I hate it in others. But whether you want to wallow in self-pity or not the fact remains that your art belongs to you. Your art is you, and no amount of sulking, petting or wallowing in how misunderstood you are is going to let you dump it like some unwanted burden, a child you no longer love.
I can hold my breath, rage against the world, make exclusive little clubs for DANNY, but the world will always be lurking outside my door just itching to turn nasty. I might be able to hide my light under a bushel but DANNY is bigger than the sum of my parts and it will never be able to hide under anything. Way too big, both literally and metaphorically for that.
And this, always, is at the root of my demon-wrassling.
I want to cast DANNY off regularly. Sometimes once a week, sometimes once an hour. Sometimes I hate the sight of it so much I can barely stand to be in the same house as it.
I went through a phase, about 6 months or so before I left Orkney where I actually couldn't stand to be in the same house. We'd drive for miles (which isn't easy in Orkney – you tend to drive into the sea) and go for long walks which invariably involved further long hours spent sitting in favourite-haunt cafes, drinking way too much tea and talking, talking, talking. Sometimes it was pragmatic stuff. Marketing, things we could do, try, sell, approach, broach. But equally often it would be Struggles With My Art. (Never live with an artist – it's wearing.)
Oh, and Christ, can I struggle. I sometimes think self-doubt is my middle name.
Ponder on this for a little moment – it's shorter to imagine than live through, I promise. DANNY is the equivalent of twenty-two fat P. D. James novels or, if you have a shorter concentration span, forty-four Mills & Boons.
Now, imagine if you had to keep the story lines and characters of forty-four novels in your head, forty-four mystery novels at that, where nothing is what it seems and all forty-four novels are built on a structure of lies and deceits. And then imagine that you had to keep just one strong, unifying storyline running through all forty-four novels and their subsidiary storylines, without your reader's interest flagging and you had to keep it at an emotional pitch, convey strong, dark emotions like lust and envy and resentment and revenge and rage and, and, and, and…
But, because your life isn't hard enough, you decide to try and break some new ground with this idea, but not with any cheap artsy tricks - oh no - but by throwing in some unexpected juxtapositions, breaking a few carved-in-stone literary rules, sophisticated stuff that no-one has ever tried before – all the time making it look easy, keeping it accessible, but always challenging, of course.
That is a little bit of what it is like doing DANNY. Sometimes, understandably, it just wears you out and you want to shout "Stop the world, I want to get off."
But you can't, because you've gone into labour with this baby and you can't stop half-way through.
DANNY would be a difficult enough project for a large publishing house to take on never mind an indie outfit like Poison Pixie.
And this is where the demon of self-pity rears its ugly head.
Oh, how easy it is to give into self-pity. No-one appreciates you. Not only do they not value what you put into writing and producing your work but you have to fight off all the whispering serpents who actually try to turn it against you. From the flea bites of inane criticism to the more pernicious hate campaigns it all takes a chunk out your creative spirit until you find yourself cornered, wondering why the fuck you are doing this.
It's a book, for Christ sake, entertainment, when did it get to be a war?
And right there self-pity has just seen a golden opening to strike you down in your tracks.
The thing about self-pity is it is so alluring, it feels like panacea to your injured soul. It sounds for all the world like the kind friend you so badly need at that moment telling you exactly what you want to hear. No, you shouldn't do your book, they're not worth it. You should stay safe in your little house of pain and solitude where no-one can hurt you ever again. There, there…
But, as with all 'friends' who only have "your best interests at heart", you should listen very carefully to what is really being said.
You should stay safe inside.
Stop, in other words.
That's what your self-pity is geared up to do. Stop you. You're being wounded: ipso facto, stay home – don't get wounded.
Trouble is there's a nasty little side effect to giving into this one's honeyed phrases. You will never write/dance/sing/film again and every single fucker that ever tried to do you down just won.
Right now, sitting here, quite safely out of my self-pity's danger zone, I can think of at least two people who would be personally gratified - to a masturbatory level - if I announced I was giving up on DANNY.
I would love to be fragile here, play the sympathy card, but I can't. I am, at core, an odd creature, far too like my own Unholy Three to be worthy of 'little pet' adoption. I am fragile, vulnerable, far too tolerant of other people's opinions, no matter how ill-founded. My upbringing was corrosive and ugly, not in its events, but in the ceaseless sanding down of hope. I want to offer you that damaged soul, the interesting junkie, the tragic drunk, the poor, bruised and battered soul much beloved of biopics and victim faction.
But I'm not her. And she's not me.
There is something in me. I sometimes characterise it as The Fifty Foot Dream Lobster - which, I have a feeling, I have never properly explained to you - and it is well-nigh fucking indestructible.
Equally well I'd like to characterise this 'something' as strength, nobility, steely determination, courage and, yes, it probably does have parts of all of these things. But basically, at heart, I fear it is something as dull and everyday and non-mystical as sheer cussed stubbornness.
Think I'm going to go away, give you an easy life? Fucking think again, shithead.
See? Awkward, foul-mouthed and completely without charm.
On the upside, this stubbornness, my Teflon soul, brought you John, Danny, Ian. Without my own heart of stone, theirs would be forever unexplored. It wouldn't even have a distant beat, never mind a life of its own.
So… demon-wrassling is never 'done'. It goes on and on, on a day to day basis. Sometimes they are low and little, other times they rear up like the Jabberwocky and attempt to force you back into your cave of beaten anonymity.
But it's too late for me. I came out the cave long ago and I can't go back in. I like the freedom too much, plagued by more dangers than is good for me as it may be. Sticking my head above the parapet and sticking my tongue out has become my raison d'ệtre.
Every wounding does make you a little more proficient in the art of being wounded. They last less time, the blows go less deep, you recover more completely, they fuck up less of your head.
This is where us tough little cunts always win the day – we learn how to use our enemies to get stronger. We go on to fight another day with a bigger arsenal of protection than others around us falling at the first fence. We're still there at the eighth obstacle and still going strong. It's like a war of numbers, or maybe time. I might not be the best right now but if I hang in long enough I'll outrun the rest.
My rise to the top is inevitable.
And with that cheering thought in our heads, and in the spirit of moving towards that goal, let me just say that DANNY Volume 2 will be with you this year, as will a new (fully interactive) Flash website with more features than ever before.
DANNY Volume 1, in turn, is being targeted as the spearhead to promote a global onslaught of Coca-cola style DANNY branding – in an absolutely good way, of course, with my artistic integrity complete intact.
Yes, art will always win the day.
Especially if there is a rhino-hided shameless self-promoting cocksucking whore right behind it.
Roll on World Domination. I'm ready.
Not yet read DANNY? You can check it out now at Poison Pixie where you can read a BIG extract for Free! Or grab a copy on Amazon here.
Once you've bagged your masterpiece you can rub shoulders with DANNY's other rich and famous readers at Chancery Fans
There is also an independent Live Journal DANNY Discussion Board run by fans, C Stone's DANNY. If you would like to talk about the upcoming new volumes or find out why you should read Volume 1 (and you should) Jill & Jodie are experts, so please go along and badger them with questions and unreasonable demands for proof that it's worth reading before you part with your readies. I guarantee they will provide the most hardened literary cynics with a reason, or die trying.
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