Relative Wealth

I consider myself a pretty prosperous guy. My home is lovely. The rent's paid and so are the bills. I can vote for my favorite authors (and promising newcomers) by buying their books new.

My various scribbles dabs and marks pay for the necessities and even a few extras. It's been over fifteen years since I had a 'real' job, and there's no temptation to run out and get one.

Like I said, prosperous.

Turns out I make less than the minimum wage.

I can't tell you how funny I find this!

La Vie Artistique

Just watching Eating Watermelon in White Company (and Enjoying It). I was already a Melvin Van Peebles fan -- my own djinn are so restless, I'm a sucker for any polymath.

And Melvin is a genius. Scary, scary smart. Restless, intellectual and continually grounded. Like I said, already a fan.

But then in the movie, I heard about how Melvin got into movies. He made three short films, but got no interest in America. So he went to Holland and studied astronomy. French filmfolk asked him to come out, opened his eyes and left him.

He found himself in France: alone on the Champs Elysees, didn't speak a word of French, three cans of well-regarded short films under his arm and not a penny in his pocket.

He was a beggar for a while. Then he became a street musician. Gradually, he learned French. While he was still busking, he learned that there was a law giving French writers a director's union card to bring their own works to the screen.

So Melvin wrote four novels in French. They were critically acclaimed. He took the novels in and got his director's card.

And that's how he came to make movies.

The man is now one of my heroes!

That kind of tenacity, creativity and flexibility is what it take to make a creative career.

Too often, I meet kids with plenty of talent (for art, music, writing, etc.), but they have this real passive outlook. Like they'll take a course and then answer the want-ads or something. Now, courses don't hurt; they may even open your world and change your life. But no one cares. There are no want ads for artists, and no one cares you're alive. They also don't care if you came from a prestigious ecole or were raised in the wild by wolves.

They want to see the work. And they want the work to make them care that they're alive. And in a territory where maps don't work, twists and turns are to be expected.

It's a sort of commando sensibility: dropped behind enemy lines with a knife in your teeth and a goal. You do whatever it takes to get there: over, under or through, you get to that goal.

Best in Something

New Zealand women officially World's Most Promiscuous!

We have a working public health system, too...

(NB: Ms Lawless remains happily married -- and by all accounts faithfully mongamous -- to Mr Rob Tappert. She just happens to be the most recognizable Kiwi woman I could think of)

Dismantling Money

If you want a career in any creative field, you have to let go of a lot of entrenched attitudes, especially about money.

The first, most widely held, most pernicious myth is, "You can't make a living as a cartoonist/painter/dancer/musician/mime/writer/etc..."

Friends, relatives, strangers in line at the supermarket will tell you that, especially when you're young. I haven't had a day job in over fifteen years, and a 'helpful' soul in line with me at the bank the other day kept insisting I had to have some other way of making my living. She wanted to know what my 'real' job was.

Yes, many are called and few are chosen. Who says you can't be one of the few?

Yes, you will have to work hard. At something you love and would probably do all day for free anyway.

Yes, you have to be innovative and proactive. There are no listings in the want ads for ballerinas and sculptors. You'll have to find your own ways in to those worlds, or create your own job. Show some gumption!

But it can be done. People *do* it.

It takes faith, courage, determination, plenty of hard work and creativity, and the ability to ignore those who say it can't be done.

True Story: In my late twenties, my mom saw that I travelled a lot and didn't have a 'real' job. She also knows I'm too honest for a life of crime.

So she reached the only natural conclusion.

A series of conversations followed.

"Mom, I'm not a secret agent."

"That's okay. I know you couldn't tell me if you were."

"But I'm not."

"I understand. Just so long as it's our government."

"Mom, seriously. I'm not a secret agent."

"Fine. Operative. Asset. Whatever they're calling it these days..."

After all, everyone knows you can't make a living from art!

Paying the Bills In Style

This weekend I did a macaw that I rather liked...

Making a living in a creative field demands a certain commando flexibility, certainly at first. The early days for me were like being dropped behind enemy lines with a knife between my teeth and a mission to commit general mayhem.

Before I reached the point of just drawing pictures, I supplemented my art revenue, I taught fencing and self-defense (not together, obviously), was a roller-skating disco-dancing waiter, a porn store clerk, an apartment remodeler and (for six hellish months I can only chalk up to a quarter-life crisis) a mortgage banker. That's in addition to the usual round of waiting tables, tending bar and assorted other shit jobs.

Every now and then it occurs to me that it's been years since I worried about having to get a 'real' job. When your day job is doing a few of these babies a week, life is pretty sweet indeed.

I'm putting together a graphic novel package in the next few months. That means I'll have a chance to do another run at the comics page post that blogger ate. More to come...

I Do Love My Funny Heads

I did some Christmas caricatures. It was a lot of fun, and great to flex those particular drawing muscles again.




I would've posted these earlier, if blogger hadn't made me tear my hair out and run away during the old/new transition...

Is This Thing ON?

For some reason, blogger's been locking me out of this one.

I'm still posting, but most over on my writing blog. I'm in the process of doing a first draft right now on the newest novel, so my posts track the progress and any side-thoughts that come up in the book's creation. So far, it's a lot of fun.

Of course, at 16,000 words, I'm still in the honeymoon phase. We'll see how I like it at 75,000 when I'm sure it'll never be finished and that if I do finish it, it'll be the suckiest suck that ever sucked. Bet the blogging will be fun then!

I hope blogger lets *this* one publish....