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Squid Teeth: A Tor Original

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Sarah Langan

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“Decisive works of art participate directly in the fabric of history surrounding their maker....As viewers we readily experience the power of ground on which we cannot stand — yet that very experience can be so compelling that we may feel almost honor-bound to make art that recaptures that power. Or more dangerously, feel tempted to use the same techniques, the same subjects, the same symbols as appear in the work that aroused our passion — to borrow, in effect, a charge from another time and place...they may begin to fill their canvasses and monitors with charged particles “appropriated” from other places and times. A premise common to all such efforts is that power can be borrowed across space and time. It cannot. There’s a difference between meaning that is embodied and meaning that is referenced.”

ArtAuthenticityCreative ProcessCultural Appropriation
Book:Art and Fear
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“And when the work is going well, why on earth would we want to know? Most of the myriad of steps that go into making a piece (or a year’s worth of pieces) go on below the level of conscious thought, engaging unarticulated beliefs and assumptions about what artmaking is...We rarely think about how or why we do such things — we just do them. Changing the pattern of outcome in your work means first identifying things about your approach that are as automatic as wedging the clay, as subtle as releasing the arrow from the bow. ...We use predictable work habits to get us into the studio and into our materials; we use recurrent bits of form as starting points for making specific pieces. ....The discovery of useful forms is precious. Once found, they should never be abandoned for trivial reasons...any device that carries the first brushstroke to the next blank canvas has tangible, practical value. ....The private details of artmaking are utterly uninteresting to audiences (and frequently to teachers), perhaps because they’re almost never visible — or even knowable — from examining the finished work. ....The hardest part of artmaking is living your life in such a way that your work gets done, over and over — and that means, among other things, finding a host of practices that are just plain useful. A piece of art is the surface expression of a life lived within productive patterns. Over time, the life of a productive artist becomes filled with useful conventions and practical methods, so that a string of finished pieces continues to appear at the surface. And in truly happy moments those artistic gestures move beyond simple procedure, and acquire an inherent aesthetic all their own. They are your artistic hearth and home, the working-places-to-be that link form and feeling. They become — like the dark colors and asymmetrical lilt of the Mazurka — inseparable from the life of their maker. They are canons. They allow confidence and concentration. They allow not knowing. They allow the automatic and unarticulated to remain so.”

ArtArtistPaintingCreative Process
Book:Art and Fear
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“The human race has spent several millennia developing a huge and robust set of observations about the world, in forms as varied as language, art and religion. Those observations in turn have withstood many — enormously many — tests. We stand heir to an unstatably large set of meanings. Most of what we inherit is so clearly correct it goes unseen. It fits the world seamlessly. It is the world. But despite its richness and variability, the well-defined world we inherit doesn’t quite fit each one of us, individually. Most of us spend most of our time in other peoples’ worlds — working at predetermined jobs, relaxing to pre-packaged entertainment — and no matter how benign this ready-made world may be, there will always be times when something is missing or doesn’t quite ring true. And so you make your place in the world by making part of it — by contributing some new part to the set. And surely one of the more astonishing rewards of artmaking comes when people make time to visit the world you have created. Some, indeed, may even purchase a piece of your world to carry back and adopt as their own. Each new piece of your art enlarges our reality. The world is not yet done.”

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Book:Art and Fear
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“Paul: That depresses you? Danny: Why wouldn’t it? I mean, if this kid is trying, but failing completely…. I mean, art is hard and he doesn’t have it, and doesn’t even seem to be trying. Paul: I try. Danny: I know, but there are no guarantees that you nor Zin will become great. I mean, you both are technically solid, at times, but you both need to wean off of my poetry. You need to differentiate into Paul and Zin. I mean, but even that is no guarantee. I mean. Look at all the people on Omniversica’s e-list. I mean, I’ve talked about it, and how real life intrudes and kills off artistic impulse. You told me Ben might not have continued writing had he not met you. Who knows what Jess would have done without me? Who knows if you’ll be writing in a decade? I mean, suppose you can only be good and competent. Would that satisfy? I mean, on the e-list there are people who can be great in one poem and then for another 200 poems write shit. There’s someone who wrote a great book length poem and now writes nothing. Another guy has great talent, took classes to get degrees in religion and now does little in art, because he runs an online marketing thing. Then there are those with talent who just stop and study shit. I told you about my pal who gave up art to become a sex researcher. Then there’s that girl who spent over seventy thousand bucks at an online university where a bad writer ‘teaches’ how to be a bad writer. I told you of that video Jess showed of a bad writer girl teaching others to be generic hacks. Others fuck up their lives via pregnancy. Others just grow up and forget art. You saw the work of the one guy who spent three years on a terrible book. Then he told me he was gonna craft Youtube videos. Now, he says he’s into trading cryptocurrency. And when we met he was a poet. Now he’s into Bitcoin. It’s so depressing. I think of the old folks from the Uptown Poetry Group- some are dead, others probably homeless or in mental institutions, and I told you about that guy who harassed all the women at the UPG? And he’s probably still thriving in business. And then my ex, Stacy Stafford, who’s now a New Age Christian scam artist. Jess rails about people who come to us only for help and do nothing to help us. I mean, think of a great poet like James Emanuel, and how I tried to help him, and now his stuff is almost forgotten, and the rights to his work are held by a little shit press that doesn’t even put out his work! And what about my old friend George Dickerson, the actor and poet? I did a few interviews about his excellent screenplay on his time as a diplomat in Lebanon and no one cares- even his son, a famed filmmaker in Finland- even that son refuses to do his father’s script. I mean, he has the name, the means, and the clout to get it made, and STILL George’s art is left to wither. And these people I contact for interviews? Most of them don’t even read a simple email! They ask if a Danny Wagner Video Interview is just audio or not? I mean, READ! People are so lazy, these days, it’s unreal. One cannot even read a lousy email! I mean- Paul: Yeah, it’s a shame. Danny: I’m not a magician. I can only guarantee that Jess and I will be great writers because only we are NOW and currently great. Others? Who knows? Some forget literature to do pop genres like sci fi or romance- maybe switch things up by writing about goblins. Others just quit altogether. I can’t make you nor Ben great. YOU have to do that, and I recall reading that excerpt you sent Jess of his book, where he wants money and to be a great artist, too, but by doing so parttime. That is not a good long term sign, but it is what it is. I can’t change people. I can’t change you. I can’t change Ben. I can’t change this Landon kid. I can’t even change Jess! I’m mortal.”

WritingArtTalentDeclineWriting Trajectory
Author:Dan Schneider
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