stupid creativity
Wednesday, January 26, 2005
I feel that i'm on the brink of having one of those days where my creative wits overcome me and i'm left feeling worthless. When i was in high school, the few years in/out of college, etc, if you'd asked me, "what are you?" i'd have said, "artist." Now i suppose i'd have to throw "web designer" out there, but most of the time i don't feel like what i do is design. My work certainly doesn't look like Art School. It looks like code that's made pretty, which is pretty much exactly what it is. I probably get the most satisfaction out of my job when i'm doing css or working on EZversion!, the flash application i've been working on for... forever. But rarely do i feel like what i'm doing is truly designing. And of course, that leads to me thinking that i have no ability to design.
For a while (around 2000) i was really into scouring the web to keep up with what was fresh, what new ideas were circulating, etc. I'd check macromedia's site of the day constantly, not just to see the site of the day, but also to see the site of the designer/team that had created it and what other work they had done. Everything was about flash and coming up with neat little effects. But at some point i realized that the web was going to change, it was going to become about delivering services more than entertaining. (I think this is changing again, but more about that later if i remember to come back to it.) Web design was going to be about creating shells in which business was conducted and not a whole lot more.
I got out of the loop of following all the cool designers, in large part because they all seemed to be working in a big circle of patting each other on the back. They'd create "design magazines" in which they interviewed themselves. They'd create neat little amorphous flash animations that wiggled around according to some forumla. But there wasn't much usable about it, even if they did seem to all land huge sites for clothing designers in new york.
My problem is that i get too competitive, and when i find something that i like, i think "why aren't you doing this, self?" I don't often stop to consider the fact that it's not my niche.
So lately i've been reading all of these design blogs, because you know, blogs are the real internet now or something, and those ideas that haunted me years ago about "why aren't you doing this" come creeping back in. Even though over the years i managed to teach myself things like actionscript, javascript, css. Without prompting. I mean, when i got this job, it was because i was good with photoshop and could animate things in flash. Actionscript was barely even alive. (Flash 3!) No one asked me to start doing html, i decided to do it because i was using dreamweaver for my own sites at home. All of the things that interest me, that i explore, that eventually become part of my job, are a result of my own curiousities, and thus new abilities. Still i read some article that someone writes, talking about all of the intricacies of something that i have practical, working knowledge of, and it's deflating.
Sometimes i look at my artwork and i think "this is trash." But when i put my mind to it, i do this. It's the same thing with my music. My confidence wanes when i'm unproductive and surges when i finish something new.
So anyway, in his "manifesto" Hugh MacLeod speaks of this idea that you don't have to do something phenominal, you have to do something original. This is where i think my last few sophrosyne songs come in. It wasn't something that i was aiming for when i started Lafaye (pronounced: La Fi). But i realized that this was something of a niche, definately something that no one else was doing. It's music that is about as "jason" as it gets. It expresses, at least to me, my love and longing for my home, new orleans. But more than that, it's a manifestation of this idea that i have that even if i'm not IN new orleans, i can still have new orleans here by creating it around me. The last three sophrosyne songs take that idea from something mundane like hanging a picture of a magnolia above the mantle to something much greater. It's more of a true expression of who i am as an individual.
The conflict here is that i've never considered myself a musician. I'm an artist! Uh, i like to draw and stuff. My creative side, where paying the bills is concerned, has manifested itself in being a web designer and part of me has a problem resolving the fact that the place where i seem to have found my unique voice is not in visual art.
Either way, i seem to have managed to ride the fence for long enough today without falling off into the despondency side of things, so i should at least consider that progress for the day. I'm gonna attach one of my favorite pictures of new orleans at the top of this post, then go home. It's of Audubon Park uptown near the Magazine St. side of the park. One of my favorite places in the city. Enjoy. Check out the latest draft of sept song and look at the pic if you please.
ps, i'm not running the spell checker on this.
posted by j. Permanent Link
