(no subject)

i got the sweetest fuckin email late today omg

> (guy from our mexico team who clearly remembers me well) 'hey so $CEO and his squad are stopping by soon and i want to give them a special gift of my homemade spicy salsa with a custom label with $our_logo_and_stuff, could you possibly have the time to make the label at some point, no problem if you're too busy ;a; ps would you like some of my salsa too?'

> me in less than 20 minutes: OMG heck YEAH i would love your homemade spicy salsa!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! here's the designs, let me know if you need anything else! :D :D 

(no subject)

the quote about art and vietnam is going around in my head again.

“During the Vietnam War... every respectable artist in this country was against the war. It was like a laser beam. We were all aimed in the same direction. The power of this weapon turns out to be that of a custard pie dropped from a stepladder six feet high.” ― Kurt Vonnegut

 

and i guess i've been mulling it over with the odd cocktail of thinking about artistic Purpose and how i'm much, much less ambitious than I ever was, at least in terms of blood sweat and tears of getting visibility to leverage art For Something. also about the general, uhhhh, existential fear? some artists have with AI, art as a social movement, art as a tool for Bettering Da World, you know, heavy stuff like that.

artists like a snappy one-sentence Purpose with their art. totally okay, sometimes it helps to focus people, whether it's technically or emotionally. sometimes it's just a useful tool to get into galleries. sometimes they for real Believe in art's capability to better the world. sometimes they honest to god believe in their One Massive Story to tell and it's enough to drive them for a lifetime, and that's really cool too. goodness knows i love reading those stories.

personally, i got real disillusioned with art-as-a-social-good/purpose sometime in the last 5 years. in the sense of 'i do more tangible good for other people and the world by being physically there and being kind to people, by being a manager that protects my people and/or doesn't suck (low bar, that), and ensuring my "actions' ripple out with warmth.' woo shit like that.  like, i could honestly die tomorrow, and i'd have no regrets living with this philosophy even though it's comparatively really... airquotes ""simple"".

sometimes i feel like it's shoved at people that art must always be For Something Bigger. shoved at people until everyone feels guilty if they don't have that squeaky clean 'i justify spending this much time scribblnig because i'm doing Good' excuse. maybe that's art school talking. maybe it's this frankenstein corporatized, capitalized idea of trying to better the world with a fundementally tainted tool (who's paying you?).  maybe it's in light of a lot of fandom-adjacent drama with creative people trying to balance other people's unrealistic ideas of Doing Good with something that's ultimately a guilty pleasure. it rings a little hollow when it both (a) doesn't speak to you, and (b) you've seen how twisted that path's gotten, with people outright wielding passion of art as a weapon on others for the sake of "good".

(what if i don't trust anyone's idea of good, these days. what if i just want to exist. and draw.)

but also,

sometime's it's truly okay to say 'god put me on this planet earth to draw one (1) beautiful bishie' for 30+ years and be genuinely content with Just That, without the reflexive guilt.

( see also: