If you've been hibernating for the last few months, you'll have missed the fact that we now have a dog. Time consuming? Hard work? Sure - but totally worth it. I even built him his own blog so that I wouldn't write about him too much here but it's very tempting all the same. There's a lot of things on the proverbial desk this week, let's see if I can make sense of it all. First of all, on the day job front, we have a show this weekend which is always good fun if not rather time consuming. I'm looking forward to this one because my buddy Wayne Simmons is coming up to work on some stuff, but we also have clandestine plans to do a podcast. Wayne figured it would be a fun idea to interview me about my 'career' in magazines (I'm sure he intended the term loosely) and then also about by books and writing - something that I'm really looking forward to because I've never been made to really think about it before. Back in the real world, I know I won't be able to help myself and it will transform itself into a two-way street pretty swiftly, so if you're a fan of his work, stay tuned for the results of that. I'll post them here and Wayne will do his thing with it as well. If the name is damningly unfamiliar to you, Wayne has written a good few books (or a few good books even) - all the info is over at his linked blog there, but the latest is called Plastic Jesus and looks like this...
...and it's totally worth your time. Anyway, if it all goes wrong, the worst that can happen is that we'll have a "hair vs no hair" picture to post. Sometimes, that's as good as it gets. Mr Simmons (everybody should have a friend called Mr Simmons) also puts on his own show - Scardiff - in err, Cardiff (natch). With the wind in the right direction, I'm looking to release Turn The Lamp Down Low in time for it and launch it there, but that's months away (October) but it's a heads up for you all the same.
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I've been reading about.. hmm.. how can I put it... "making things happen when you're out on a limb" this week and came across some good wisdom along the way that I think is worth sharing. In Seth Godin's book The Icarus Deception, he puts it like this (and I paraphrase): Oprah (as a show) is dead and buried so you can't go on her show to get noticed, but YouTube actually wants you to host your own show and they will give you the space for free - but neither Oprah or YouTube will call you up. The record company's aren't looking to sign you but iTunes and hundreds of other places will be only too pleased to play host to you. Sadly, they're not likely to call you up and ask either.
The point of this section is that it's in our very nature to wait to be picked. To seek permission and authority for somebody to say you are good enough and that in turn, validates what you're doing - but the world only turns on that axis for a select few and who knows what's gone on behind the scenes in order to get them that far. Sometimes, the very thing going on behind the scenes is the very thing that's being suggested here - getting off your ass and making something because it's there to be made and only you can do it your way.
Later in the book, there's a great section about your audience. How you can read 24 good reviews and one bad one - guess which one you'll hold onto. That's right.. the bad one and exactly why you should never read any reviews - good or bad. Ignore them all. I need to quote this next part:
"After you've created your art, whatever it is, it's done. What the audience does with it is out of your control. If you focus your angst and emotion on the people who don't get it, you've destroyed part of your soul and haven't done a thing to improve your art. Your art, if you made it properly, wasn't for them in the first place. Figure out who your art is for, get better at connecting with that audience, ignore the rest."
There's one final bit that hit home with me: he then describes how a big enough audience will destroy you because some of them will want what you do taller, shorter, wider, thinner, cheaper, more expensive... but (and this is the important part if you're still with me on this) it's only the mass marketers that need everybody. You do not. You only need to matter to a few.
Interesting trains of thought huh. The key is actually believing in it and living by it knowing that it's true no matter how hard it gets.
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Meantime, the best thing the web has turned up for me this week is this fine article on How To Make A Bone Chandelier over at Atlas Obscura. Take a look. What in the world could be simpler than this:
