If you don’t know Jim Woodring, see him. If you do, there’s a lot to check out at his site. There’re flash games and wallpaper. This picture’s on my desktop.
I think I’ll start posting more pictures. It’s easy, it looks nice, and I don’t really have to write anything.
12 comments:
I wonder if he actually takes anything while he’s working. I read the Beatles didn’t drop any acid in the studio. Frank Zappa never did drugs. It takes a certain kind of work ethic to focus and get something done with such crazy precision. R. Crumb dropped acid and drew pictures but those came out kind of fucked-up and aggressive. But then that’s what was inside him.
There were some earlier comments that artists shouldn’t take drugs, like it’s cheating. I don’t know. Everyone I admire was doped up on something: John Lennon, Kerouac, Philip K. Dick. Even Freud was a coke addict. Drugs don’t make you a great artist, but if you’re a great artist, they help. It might be wrong, but there’s proof.
Then there's Willie Wilson, who was a wicked-good centerfielder for the Kansas City Royals in the early 1980s while strung out on cocaine. Then he found Jesus, sobered up, and promptly started sucking. That's why I always tell people, if God talks to you, DO NOT LISTEN TO HIM.
thanks.
xo. war.
Using drugs is so politically incorrect at the moment, it's sickening.
HL
i did say it's cheating, but you're right...it doesn't take away from my enjoyment of the end product. to each his/her own is what i should have said i guess. i guess it's truer to say that your art is a reflection of yourself, drugs or no. and now that i think about it, the sports thing (saying it's like pro atheltes taking steriods) wasn't a good parallel, because art is not a competition.
Kimberly said: "...art is not a competition."
This is somewhat beside the point, but I'm not so sure about that. At a minimum, art has competitive components. I don't think any social community (be it vocational; avocational; cultural; or something else) is completely noncompetitive. Artists (most of them, at least) need audiences because they need, or want, to be told that their work is "good." Goodness is a relative concept and demands comparison. Like anyone else, artists want to be better than others. It's nothing to be ashamed of, or to run from.
So I'm not so sure the athlete/steroid comparison is so inapt.
damn, i knew someone would argue with that. i almost had that whole conversation with myself as i posted that, but thought i'd keep it short and just say it's not about competition. ultimately my philosophy on art is that it's human...if humans are competitive, art/artists are competitive if an artists takes drugs his art will reflect it. art is whatever we are and vice versa. thanks spiral.
A competitive urge is an important part of inspiration for me. It’s not necessarily with any one person, but with myself, or writers from the past, or life itself. I don’t need to be as well-regarded as I used to--as if it’s proof of worth. Actually the prospect of being loved by a lot of people scares the shit out of me. Still, there’s something intangible that fuels my ambition, and competition is part of it. Maybe it’s the competition to win out against all my past rejection letters. The talk has gone from drugs to competition, cool.
Holy shit, just learned that the roof caved in from the rain at my local market where we shop. I don’t think anybody was inside at the time.
Kimberly, posted that last comment while you were posting. I was going to write something but I didn't want to disagree with you twice in a row. Thankfully, Spiral jumped in. I agree that I'm probably more competitive by nature. I like sports.
I also like arguing about drugs and competition, but maybe that's implied...
you can disagree with me as often as you want. when i see something that makes me want to reach deeper/higher, i like to call it "inspiration"...even though, it may in reality be competition. maybe that's what many artists mean when they talk about "inspiration?" just a thought. inspiration is a prettier word (to me). gees, i'm a commenting freak today.
Kimberly, I'm a commenting freak today, too. I guess it's because I have the day off, my wife doesn't, and I just tried to watch the Last Samurai but couldn't put down the computer.
Anyway, I don't think inspiration and competition are the same thing. But inspiration is the product of hard work (at least it has been for me, on those few occasions when I've experienced it), and work may be motivated by competition. Let me put it this way: I engage in various purportedly artistic endeavors: Photography; writing; blog-spewing. If you told me tomorrow no one would ever read anything I wrote, my blog would never get another click, and my photographs could never be displayed, I might tinker with them for a while, but I suspect I'd lose interest over time. (Say, actually that's pretty much what HAS happened.) I need to feel there is at least a chance someone will favor what I've created. Once I feel I have such a chance, there's a little room for inspiration to emerge.
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