October 21st, 2020. Art.

The shame is if you get the calling to spread your wings and fly
And you approach the cliff, but then you back away
And from then on you wonder what it would be like to soar on the wind even for a little while, even if all you did was flail around aimlessly and crash
Think of all the people who have set their sights on being a professional football player or sculptor or [taken on any challenge] that comes wrapped in pain
Think of how many of them have failed or come up short or didn’t make it
Were those people wrong to be blinded by their passions? Were they wrong to chase a dream? Is it better to have jumped and crashed than to never have jumped at all?

Bryan Ranney quoting Elements of Poker by Tommy Angelo

I think I’m off course. There’s no map. There are no markers. But sometimes there are guides.

Annie Leibovitz is a marvelous artist. A portrait photographer who’s been working longer than I’ve been alive, she was part of my training in art school and later a couple of my friends went and worked with her in New York much to the awe of the rest of us. She is connected to me via a phone call to a friend and so she’s always seemed a touch more real as a person. And as an artist she has a sensitivity to character and moment that makes her work truly shine.

Annie was one of the keynote speakers at Adobe Max this year and it was really quite wonderful to hear her speak about her art – especially in such a specific context – and I think I needed to hear what she said – specifically in that context.

Adobe Max is an annual creative conference hosted by Adobe (Photoshop, Premier, all the big artsy apps… I use it for video, photography, audio editing, web design… ) that I’ve never taken part in because, at upwards of $2000 to attend, the price tag’s just too steep. This year, for better or for worse, it was an entirely digital event and it’s free with your Adobe subscription. I was tuned in for as much of yesterday as I could stomach [which isn’t as much as it SHOULD be but a) my attention span ain’t too hot b) I had two client sessions and IMT : Live to run and c) it’s on PST so I was pretty exhausted long before the programming cut out] but what I caught was really valuable. A mix of workshops, tips, tricks, inspiration and effectively an ongoing press release for new application features, I’m sad that I won’t be able to tune in for much of it today and tomorrow – but am so grateful that the majority of it (should) be saved for later…
But I’m really, really thankful that I caught Leibovitz’ portion of the keynote.

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Now, listening to your heroes speak isn’t ALWAYS a good thing. The art and the artist are two different things and I remember Suzanne Vega’s keynote to NERFA a couple of years ago being a rambling, dispirited thing. Listening to Dave McKean speak about his art with a mix of whimsy and delight was… good… but unenlightening. Talking to a personal guitar hero about guitar was sadly nearly incoherent. But Annie Leibovitz said some things that I needed to hear.

The arts and music communities are two different things and I was raised (schooled… forged? Formed?) in the former but am absolutely now surrounded in the latter – and I don’t think about the contrasts often but sometimes they are jarringly apparent. It’s all tangled up in the obnoxious “what is art” and “who is an artist” questions that art students Love to bandy about and though I got sick of it years ago, I think it DOES frame my own creative drive in a specific way that is key to my coming to terms with what I produce, how I create, WHY I create – and my satisfaction with those creations.

Leibovitz talked about the need for obsession when you begin. Especially when young, the absolute hunger and myopic compulsion that DRIVES us to create. I felt it. Most of my art school friends felt it. It compels you to create even when it hurts. Perhaps BECAUSE it hurts. The mania. The passion. The purposelessness when not creating. For me art was always very, very physical and it was a very seamless drive to move from scraping my fingers through paint to scraping my fingers over a guitar. And the medium has changed and I’ve found my voice through the medium – which is very, very different from learning the medium “correctly”. I believe strongly in how I was taught in art school – learning the basics, mastering the masters and then knowing how to break from it to develop your own voice. But when I moved on to other media (guitar and literally my own voice) I was no longer starting from scratch. I’d developed a pounding, pulsing, grinding voice in paint and in sculpture and brought that to the new device. I treated my brushes like I treated my pencils. I treated my canvases the same way. I treated my sculptures with that same funneled search and anger and it makes sense that I should treat my guitar, my bass, my voice the same way.
Maybe that’s an excuse to not go back and learn guitar from the roots on up. Outside of old blue structures, I’ve never done that. And interestingly, the more I learn about old Mississippi blues the more I feel like it’s absolutely plugged (or unplugged) into treating the instrument in a similar way – not letting the “proper” use of the media get in the way of the raw firehose of output that I want / need to express.

Leibovitz also talked about aging. About losing the obsession. About evolving technique and the artists’ Journey. We all feel it as we age. Somehow we’re less urgent as there’s less time left to us. Facing down our mortality and thinking about how there’s probably fewer productive days ahead of us than there are behind is sobering – but I think that part of coming to terms with the idea of art as “journey” rather than profession, obsession, job, branded Lifestyle, whatever – is the idea that a Journey has progression. Beginning. Ending. Highs lows and curves.

This is antithetical to the way our Lives are being quantified right now. Before perhaps it was just money or social status… but now every aspect of our Lives can be governed by reach and stats and Likes and Insights. Gamifying our satisfaction is not a game and it is NOT satisfying.

Now, Leibovitz probably didn’t say any of the above. Like a Tarot reading or staring at the clouds I’m sure I’m bringing a lot of my own meaning into what she said. I’ll have to listen to it again (except I think it’s specifically the stuff with celebrity presenters that will NOT be available later) but I think as I read article after article about the PROCESS of production, and the mechanics of recording, songwriting … I need a guide to remind me of the difference betwixt process vs journey.

Don’t get me wrong. I LOVE process. I enjoy following directions and coming to a destination. But I also greatly enjoy wandering. I enjoy exploring. The world, people, fretboards, my fingers. A new place in my voice. I like not quite knowing where the ink’s going to go. (shout out to Adobe Fresco’s watercolour functionality on maximum scatter!).

Perhaps 5 or 6 years ago I was in a very good place mentally. As reflected by the idea that if I died any given day, I felt that I could die satisfied knowing that wherever I ended – the Journey, as cliché as it may be, was the destination and that I would’ve Arrived.

I’m not in that place anymore and that terrifies me. I think because I have forgotten and I have lost my way to some extent. I’m off the path and have lost my faith that that means I’m forging a new one. I am fighting to regain my footing and I can feel it somewhere but I keep losing my grip. Dying bitter isn’t for me. I think listening to Annie Leibovitz yesterday has got my compass spinning less, pointing more, and maybe – just maybe – my Journey can get it’s ass back in gear.