Punching A Hole Through My Head Into Myself

(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

Punching A Hole Through My Head Into Myself

A few of my regular readers know I have side projects under various pen names. We creative types all know the need to be ourselves by being someone else for various financial, marketing, or personal reasons. Sometimes those other selves teach us lessons.

It may surprise some of my readers that I’ve started doing art under one of my pen names. Not book cover art which everyone knows, or my abortive attempts at learning to draw by hand. I’ve gotten into digital art and fusion, with legacies such as midcentury modern (naturally), branding, punk, surrealism, and more. Some of it might find it’s way here, of course, but now it thrives in a more private space.

As I started doing art, I noticed my themes were deep, often disturbing, often profound, and always weird. Very honestly, had you shown this stuff to me a few years ago I wouldn’t have guessed it came from me. Now it came out with the gesture of a mouse and the click of a button, thoughts on religion and humanity that had an edge you rarely see in my writing.

This art also felt right, felt proper, felt real.I was expressing something within me. Yet when I grasped for the words to say what I was expressing, it was difficult. I didn’t know how to easily describe what was coming out in my digital art experiments.

Then I realized that visual art gave me a way to express ideas and parts of myself that my writing did not. I had an entire different language to express a side of me previously left to feelings, to vague allusions, and over-or-under descriptions. What once took careful and oft failed engineering of words came out in black and white, in filters and shapes.

I had taken up experimenting with art and given part of me a new language to reach peope. I also was far more aware of sides of myself, of feelings, of opinions, now that I had a new way to express them. I knew myself better.

This is why I think it is critical for people to learn an art of any kind – writing, music, drawing, something. Learn to express, learn to create, learn to let yourself out. There are things we need to give voice to in order to both reach people and reach ourselves.

It is also important that we creatives, no matter our chosen method, keep experimenting and broadening. A writer should try art, an artist should try music, a musician writing, and so on. We are always finding out more about ourselves, and each artistic method is a new way for the real us to come out. You don’t have to be professional or even be good, but you should explore, have fun, and see what happens.

Where’s my art going to go? I have no idea and that’s not the point. I’m going to see what happens – and I’m going to get to know who is watching this happen much better. In time, we might get to know them better together.

Steven Savage

Coming To Our Separate Senses

(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

You may remember my earlier post on “granularity” as a measure of quality of story.  My take was that good work has a level of detail, much as a visual work does.  Some works of broad tropes may be big, colorful detail (like an 8 bit game), others may have fine, subtle detail (like a realistic painting).  I felt the visual metaphor was useful.

In a discussion with my friend Serdar, he brought up how he had a similar term for good works – pungent.  That work that has a power to it that brings a reaction just the way a strong smell does.  Pleasant or unpleasant, it has a certain something that draws you in, a depth.

I went with sight as a metaphor.  He went with smell a metaphor.  I suggested we should find other metaphors using the remaining senses, but by the time the joke was made I took it seriously.  Why not experiment with metaphors to understand creativity?  My creative friends and I are always trying to find metaphors to understand what makes creative work good.

Writers, artist, cosplayers, etc. want to know what’s good, but creativity is not so easily classified.  But exchanging metaphors and comparisons like this?  That’s valuable, small signs and milestones to help us get where we’re going.

(OK now I’m using a map metaphor.  See what I mean?)

By taking a moment to think about good works as pungent (as opposed to my granular), I gain a new way to appreciate good works and improve my own.  Is this story I’m considering more soy sauce or fermented pepper paste?  Should a blog post be like a delightful smell that lures you in, or the punch-in-the-nose scent that gets your attention?  For that matter, could I be writing something so bland there’s no “scent” at all?

I invite you to exchange metaphors and brainstorm them with your creative friends.  See what kind of visceral relations and comparisons you can come up with.  Your differences will probably lead you to some informative places . . .
They may even lead to metaphors that are pungent.  Or granular.  Or use some other sense . . .

Steven Savage

Virality Banality

(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

Over the years, the term “going viral” started to get on my nerves.  As I’m a writer, this nails-on-chalkboard-in-my-soul experience is common as “going viral” is oft a goal of writers.  We want tales of our books to “go viral” so they reach our audience – oh, and so we make money.  Despite the “positive” take on it, I kept finding it annoying.

I figured it out recently – and I’m glad to say three years of Covid-19 chaos was only a minor part of it for this hypochondriac.  However, it does involve viruses-as-metaphor – so let’s talk viruses.

A virus isn’t even a living thing; it’s a replication machine that uses living creatures to reproduce.  It has no reactions, no feelings, it’s not even a single-celled bacteria.  A virus is pointless – which is probably why they’re so scary – at least a bacterium is alive like you.

The idea of “going viral” as an author or artist gets to me as the idea is “you hijacked a bunch of people’s attention and got them to spread what you posted.”  The quality of your book or art doesn’t matter – at best, it’s an afterthought of whatever meme or clever marketing phrase you used.  Dross and brilliance, specialty work and mass appeal creations, the content doesn’t matter.

There’s a creepy implication to “going viral” that your work could be like a virus, and that’s laudable.  You can make your work perfectly calibrated to sell, create a perfect campaign, and get a bunch of attention – but there’s nothing there but a bunch of optimized math.  I’m unsettled by the idea of “virality” replacing creativity.

When you take a look at our media and social media landscape, you can see it’s gone in that direction.

What do I do with this knowledge of my opinions?  Mostly it tells me what I’m comfortable doing as an author to promote my works.  Partially it may tell me why some of my fellow creatives are unsettled by “going viral.”

But it also means I’m casting a far more jaundiced eye on marketing and social media, and I’m sure I’ll have more opinions to follow.

Steven Savage