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June 02, 2004
Volume 37: Harder than yr Husband
Sexy Losers is a very good filthy webcomic, yadda yadda, and anybody who doubts it's drawn by a pornogenius probably thinks King of Queens is funny and maybe even buys lottery tickets every week. It got a couple of bad reviews and Hard, the artist, after a billion years drawing the thing, bruised like a lily fresh plucked at dawn. Newsflash, Hard, my diddling dearest, if your blood weren't running so close to the surface, they wouldn't be able to touch you with a vacuum trawler full of vestigal harpoons.
Sure, it's nice to know one's fans appreciate one. It's just not enough. There comes a time in every modern artist's life when it's not good enough to give away one's best efforts for free. I experienced it, our contemporary dobbs at VictoryShag experienced it, and you, later than most perhaps because you were making a bit of cash via donations, but still, have finally come around to notice what Dr. Johnson said: no man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money. Us Canucks are discouraged from taking ourselves seriously as artistes unless we're beautifully styled but functionally flaccid feminists -- or have some grim story about the day the cow froze to death and meant little Omlet couldn't go to college after all, and was thus doomed to an aimless life toiling in the Saskatchewan fields so gray and hard and drear oh my. Wanting acknowledgement is just so ghastly and American, dears.
You are going to have to decide if you're going to take yourself seriously, and by that I mean you're going to aggressively seek what your work is worth to you, not what some random group of passersby decide to pitch into your hat. Also, refining and developing and expanding your talents, and exposing (huh) yourself to new challenges. It doesn't mean eliminating fart jokes (huh huh, I said eliminate) or even changing your material significantly. Just your attiude toward it.
So long as you undervalue your work, you'll be vulnerable to attack, because you are providing the attackers with a ready-made porthole of insecurity. This is why such fundamentally pissant and transient little jabs have made you wail and stump around. If you were content with your artiste-ic lot you wouldn't cross the street to piss on their shoes, much allow them to take up residence in your head as rationale to not produce. It's not really about them. You were just expelled from Paradise a little later than most. Take heart though, you've plenty of talented company in Limbo, chum. Meet me. Meet dobbs.
PS: Thanks for bestirring me to write my first public piece in around six months -- even if it was for no money and no fame. This artiste-ic ennui shit is murderous, especially when you're a neurological wasteland to begin with.
Posted by gtaylor at June 2, 2004 08:51 AM
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