Stop Being Afraid to Piss Off The Reader

In 1939, Joseph Haas saw that chickens have a natural tendency to peck at one another to create flock hierarchy. Once blood was drawn on a chicken, the flock then continued to peck at the injured animal. Haas created rose-colored glasses or blinders for chickens to make the red color of blood disappear. Chickens truly lived seeing the world through rose-colored glasses.

Today I had an interesting interaction with the author Rex Pickett, the author of the book Sideways and the movie made from the book. He showed a picture of a reader accosting and threatening him at a book signing, saying he had written two of the most vile characters in literature.

I responded that I thought that was a good thing, almost congratulating him, I suppose. Mr. Pickett had written something that evoked such a reaction from a reader that she took her time to show up at a book signing and tell him what she thought, face to face. I even give the reader kudos for practicing the lost art of confront-what-upsets-you rather than posting some anonymous comment on a blog or other internet device.

Another person piped in that it’s good until the threats come from the “crazy people”. That comment bothered me. I don’t condone threats or harassment, but when I write, I hope to create reactions in people. And if those reactions are opposite of what I expected, I should take it as an opportunity to look at my writing in a different perspective. What message did they read in my words that I did not intend or see as the author? Reactions like that help me remove my blinders.

I think self publishing has created a bit of a monster of writers unable to handle critiques or outright criticism. Let’s be honest, the ease of self publishing has created a glut of e-books and Amazon is quickly filling with landmines of books that should not be put out for general consumption, at least not without more work and editing.  Many new writers push their manuscripts off onto friends and family, who praise it and will even write favorable reviews on Amazon. That creates novice authors with a false sense of comfort and confidence. Then comes along The Stranger, someone who clicked a “You may also like…” link and landed on their book. And they don’t like. And they write a bad review. Or they hate it so much they turn into the Crazy Anonymous Internet Stranger who is vehement in their hatred of said book and the writer. Now the author feels “threatened”.

I say, good. Feel threatened. Feel angry. Get out of your comfort zone.

Salman Rushdie, Harper Lee and Stephen King all had and still have their haters. Authors that are now dead still have people wishing more death upon them. Damn, I wish I was that good!

This part applies to traditional, indie and self published writers: Aunt Brenda told you the story “touched her so deeply”, because it did and she loves you. But the world does not love you. The world will most of the time hate you for no real reason at all. Your book just gave them reason to hate you. And so what? If you write and cannot deal with someone saying “I hate that so much you never should have been born!” then don’t write. Just don’t. Because you’re not a writer. You’re someone who wants a pat on the head and to be surrounded by people just like you. I never want my audience to be just like me because they would bore me and I would bore of them. It’s all too nice.

Let’s all take off our rose-colored glasses and dare to see red.

366 Days of Art

2012 is about 16 sleeps away. (4 sleeps if you’re an insomniac)

I recently blurted out I am going to do an art project for every day of 2012. Clearly this was a spur-of-the-moment decision and the implications of failure did not register for all of 5 seconds after I heard myself say it. But perhaps I was subconsciously giving myself a little boost because I said “art project”. This means for every day of 2012 I can do a photograph, a charcoal sketch, doodle with a pen on a half-torn piece of a Post-It note. I can even justify some tinkering in Photoshop or any images I upload to Instagram.

My rule is I just need to have a central location I can document each project and its date of creation. For that I will use the 2012 Art Project blog. Did you click it? Did you see? 2012 is a leap year, so it is the 366 Days of Art.

This is my project and there is no prize at the end other than my sense of accomplishment, so I get to make up the rules as I go along. One rule I just came up with while typing this is that writing is art. So short pieces written on any day expressly for the purpose of the 2012 Art Project are allowed. I will just photograph those items and post them for that day. Writing and photography: the things I may not always do best, but I am comfortable with them.

I’ve done 365 photo projects before. They are, without doubt, more challenging than you might think. Finding something interesting to photograph every single day is a challenge. Pointing the camera at the ceiling or, worse, at myself and snapping a random shot is cheating. Each photo should be a stand alone journal of one moment or feeling of that day. To look at the clock and say, “Crap, it’s 11:50 PM and I have to take a picture. Well, I’ll just snap a pic of myself in the bathroom mirror…” is denying the project its value. That’s not to say you have to go to the equivalent of the Eiffel Tower each day. There were some weekends or long stretches of days that I was snowbound. After a few days, nothing in your house looks interesting. So I got a new perspective. I got flat on the floor and watched the cat cross paths with the dog. What I saw from the vantage point of a dropped crumb was a 7-pound, de-clawed cat stare down a 90-pound lab-mix dog, who awkwardly and nervously looked away.

Perspective. Sometimes we just need to adjust it to achieve a different kind of success.

Sidenote: Please people of the world… stop taking daily and nonstop pictures of yourself.  I use Instagram and some of the things people manipulate and post are gorgeous and worthy of being printed on canvas and displayed on a wall. But I am a little weary of seeing people taking up-close, brooding pictures of their faces, slapping an artsy filter on it and posting it for their followers to *heart*.

Reason vs Compassion

Greek and Roman philosophers viewed compassion as something to distrust, that reason alone should guide us. But spirituality tells us compassion is a virtue and a component of love itself, a cornerstone of humanity. One detaches you from the emotions of decisions and actions, the other lets our hearts guide us to those decisions and actions.

One preserves the self, the other exposes it.

I’ll trust my heart. Reason can be clouded but the heart never fails to show itself, even in the most unexpected places.

Fear

Ben: “What are you scared of?”

Guy: “Oh, I’m scared of mountains, feet, open spaces, front doors, six-week old rabbits, marbled rye bread, the Titanic–”

Ben: “The movie? Why are you scared of a movie?”

Guy: “No, that actual Titanic. It sunk. Who wouldn’t be scared of a ship that sunk?”

Ben and Guy stare at each other.

Guy: “And I’m scared of people who don’t get my sense of humor.”

Kaleidoscope of the Sea

My tattoo,  fresh off the pain table at the tattoo shop.

The obvious? It hurt. It hurt a lot. Andrew, the artist who took my two pictures and designed and chose the colors for what you see above, said, “You took it better than a man.” I think he sees a lot of men with tears in their eyes, so I’m still mulling over whether that was a good or a marginal compliment. My eyes remained dry, but my brow was damp with sweat most of the time.

It was almost 4 hours of pain. I now understand why people get tattoos when they are emotionally charged and trying to get over something painful. The physical pain is a good release for emotional pain. For me it was watching the past not disappear but melt into what I feel I am now. And seeing the final product, I am so happy he asked if he could throw in more shades than just blues and greens. I wanted an abstract (not realistic) wave. What he gave me was a kaleidoscope of the sea. Moving, blending, changing.

wave

These two shall become one and then tattooed upon my right shoulder on November 1.

This is not the first tattoo for me. I had one done several years ago, but I was never happy with it. It was done for all the wrong reasons. I wanted to impress someone. At least I wasn’t stupid enough to have their name or any wording done, but it was an image that reminded me of them and always represented them and that time in our lives.  At the time it seemed like the right thing to do, the right image. I look at it now with know-it-all wisdom that comes with perfect hindsight, so maybe it was right for that time.

Things change. People change. Relationships change. Tattoos do not change.

I was marked physically, but it was more of an emotional mark. The past two years have changed me in ways I can never return from. That’s good and bad, but I needed closure from that time I can never return to and that included the blue marking on my right shoulder. It feels like an emotional tether that needs to be cut.  I’ve felt this way for a very long time but rather than removal I knew I wanted to change it, cover it, morph it to better mesh with who I have become.

It sounds cliched to say “I have a close affinity with water”. Everyone does. Life began in our oceans and we need water to live. Water is life. I won’t go into all the details that led me to this because they are mine, they are my personal story. But this new mark is me. It is mine and unless someone takes a picture and has it done as well, it is mine alone. (I wouldn’t even care if someone did that, I might be flattered. But I’ll always know it’s still me and mine.)

I am not removing the past. I cannot do that and would not if I could. I am simply changing it to mesh into my present. My physical and emotional marks will finally be in sync.

What happens if I change for the future? Well, I’ll have to deal with that then. I can’t hold back waiting for the future. I have to be…be….in the here and now.

Lighthouse

Sometimes I play around with charcoal. I cannot draw, I have no delusions of being an artist.

Let’s talk about about “supposeds”.

I’m not supposed to say I am not…I cannot…I am unable to…  Such negative talk becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that will lead me down a bad path. That is what I am supposed to say about “supposeds”.  I see it more as realistic thinking. I can sometimes take a hunk of charcoal and coax a cartoon out of it. But it’s just a way to pass a little time.

Sometimes I am a little proud of what I do tho. It’s mine and that makes it good enough.