Journalism 1, Life 0
Dec. 2nd, 2008 09:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusOne day you wake up and discover you've become a journalist. It's happened to me -- an artist, do you hear! -- and I'm wondering how to make it un-happen again. It's bloody hard work.
Take this week, for instance. On Monday I had 2000 words to write about the graphic design show Forms of Inquiry, which will open soon in Stockholm. On Tuesday I wrote my column for Spanish music website Playground (the December topic is Retro Necro; so far my texts for the site have been relentlessly negative, basically telling readers I think records, record shops and innovation in music are all pretty much dead). Wednesday will be dedicated to writing up an interview I did with a jeweler last Friday for the New York Times website. Then on Thursday I have to write a column for the Opinion section of art magazine Frieze -- the title is "To Have or to Be?" and it'll basically look at the kind of experiences you can have in the art world without ever buying (or selling) a single piece.
Obviously I enjoy writing. If I'm not doing it for money, I'm doing it here for free. The kind of activities I'd be doing if I weren't writing are also, in a sense, writing. I'd be making songs, books, performances which are really nothing more than writing in real time, or acting out bits of writing I've done beforehand. It's not writing I'm getting sick of, but journalism.
Actually, it isn't even journalism. I think it should be compulsory for aging rock stars to take up journalism, just to get them engaged with the world, keep them learning, wean them off drugs and booze, give them a bit of mental discipline. That or pottery. No, what I worry about is the ratio of experience to writing. It's rapidly approaching one to one.
A 1:1 ratio of experience to writing means that you've become an efficient journalistic machine: nothing you do ever goes to waste. Every single thing you experience gets written about somewhere. It doesn't have to be experience in the real world; it almost seems like I write, now, about every website I visit too.
Now, a good writer should be able to make anything -- even his doubts about writing! -- into good grist for his mill. But warning lights should start flashing when you find you're hardly experiencing anything new because you're so busy writing entertainingly about the few things you do still have time to experience. I've had to pull out of writing for Viennese art magazine Spike, for instance, because they wanted me to make a sort of Berlin Art Diary, but I just don't get out enough to write about art -- so busy am I sitting at home writing about art! I'm also worried by my design writing, which used to consist of me harrassing design editors to let me write about designers I really admired, but has recently turned into an editor asking me to write -- at a tempting dollar a word -- about a designer I've never heard of. All too often there isn't time in my schedule or the designer's for a meeting, so I end up googling and rewriting stuff people have already said on the web.
Another thing that worries me is the puritanism that wells up in me when I'm wearing my journalist's cap. Anyone who knows my songs or my literary fiction or my performance art knows it's not in the least bit puritanical, but something about being given an opinion column to fill up brings out the John Knox in me; it's a bully pulpit, and I can't resist mounting the creaking steps and delivering a hellfire sermon. Hence my Wired column turned into a series of jeremiads against technology (cell phones were "hell phones" and so on) and advertising (which of course was biting the hand that fed me), and my New York Times pieces take a perversely anti-consumerist tone in a blog which is meant to be all about "consuming passions". But the fact is that anyone who had the money to enjoy a really passionate consumer life probably wouldn't be bashing out journalism in the first place. (Our fate as journalists is to write about experiences we'll probably never enjoy, or enjoy only as launch night freebies -- assuming we can afford the plane trip to New York, of course.)
My slot in The Moment doesn't even make that worrying 1:1 ratio; I've ended up covering the Yokohama Triennale, for instance, via blog reports and hearsay. Another day, another subject, another thousand words. There's no time to stop and actually do something. Journalism 1, Life nil.
So my resolution for 2009 is to write less journalism and do a bit more living; to boost the life side and give the writing something to get its teeth into. I'm hoping to do more traveling next year, a bit of teaching, some performance art, some singing tours and some reading tours (because I have two books coming out, and somebody somewhere may want me to read from them). I don't think I'll stop blogging, because I love writing in the heat of an enthusiasm. But I hope to have fewer weeks like this week -- another day, another deadline.
Take this week, for instance. On Monday I had 2000 words to write about the graphic design show Forms of Inquiry, which will open soon in Stockholm. On Tuesday I wrote my column for Spanish music website Playground (the December topic is Retro Necro; so far my texts for the site have been relentlessly negative, basically telling readers I think records, record shops and innovation in music are all pretty much dead). Wednesday will be dedicated to writing up an interview I did with a jeweler last Friday for the New York Times website. Then on Thursday I have to write a column for the Opinion section of art magazine Frieze -- the title is "To Have or to Be?" and it'll basically look at the kind of experiences you can have in the art world without ever buying (or selling) a single piece.
Obviously I enjoy writing. If I'm not doing it for money, I'm doing it here for free. The kind of activities I'd be doing if I weren't writing are also, in a sense, writing. I'd be making songs, books, performances which are really nothing more than writing in real time, or acting out bits of writing I've done beforehand. It's not writing I'm getting sick of, but journalism.
Actually, it isn't even journalism. I think it should be compulsory for aging rock stars to take up journalism, just to get them engaged with the world, keep them learning, wean them off drugs and booze, give them a bit of mental discipline. That or pottery. No, what I worry about is the ratio of experience to writing. It's rapidly approaching one to one.
A 1:1 ratio of experience to writing means that you've become an efficient journalistic machine: nothing you do ever goes to waste. Every single thing you experience gets written about somewhere. It doesn't have to be experience in the real world; it almost seems like I write, now, about every website I visit too.
Now, a good writer should be able to make anything -- even his doubts about writing! -- into good grist for his mill. But warning lights should start flashing when you find you're hardly experiencing anything new because you're so busy writing entertainingly about the few things you do still have time to experience. I've had to pull out of writing for Viennese art magazine Spike, for instance, because they wanted me to make a sort of Berlin Art Diary, but I just don't get out enough to write about art -- so busy am I sitting at home writing about art! I'm also worried by my design writing, which used to consist of me harrassing design editors to let me write about designers I really admired, but has recently turned into an editor asking me to write -- at a tempting dollar a word -- about a designer I've never heard of. All too often there isn't time in my schedule or the designer's for a meeting, so I end up googling and rewriting stuff people have already said on the web.
Another thing that worries me is the puritanism that wells up in me when I'm wearing my journalist's cap. Anyone who knows my songs or my literary fiction or my performance art knows it's not in the least bit puritanical, but something about being given an opinion column to fill up brings out the John Knox in me; it's a bully pulpit, and I can't resist mounting the creaking steps and delivering a hellfire sermon. Hence my Wired column turned into a series of jeremiads against technology (cell phones were "hell phones" and so on) and advertising (which of course was biting the hand that fed me), and my New York Times pieces take a perversely anti-consumerist tone in a blog which is meant to be all about "consuming passions". But the fact is that anyone who had the money to enjoy a really passionate consumer life probably wouldn't be bashing out journalism in the first place. (Our fate as journalists is to write about experiences we'll probably never enjoy, or enjoy only as launch night freebies -- assuming we can afford the plane trip to New York, of course.)My slot in The Moment doesn't even make that worrying 1:1 ratio; I've ended up covering the Yokohama Triennale, for instance, via blog reports and hearsay. Another day, another subject, another thousand words. There's no time to stop and actually do something. Journalism 1, Life nil.
So my resolution for 2009 is to write less journalism and do a bit more living; to boost the life side and give the writing something to get its teeth into. I'm hoping to do more traveling next year, a bit of teaching, some performance art, some singing tours and some reading tours (because I have two books coming out, and somebody somewhere may want me to read from them). I don't think I'll stop blogging, because I love writing in the heat of an enthusiasm. But I hope to have fewer weeks like this week -- another day, another deadline.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-02 08:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-02 08:52 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-02 09:10 pm (UTC)what sort of teaching are you considering?
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-02 09:14 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-02 09:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-02 09:20 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-02 09:21 pm (UTC)Academia 1, Life 0
Date: 2008-12-02 09:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-02 09:44 pm (UTC)I like preachers, but only melodramatic ones like Nicky Wire and Renato whose average speech is more meandering than that of the drunkard at the pub while they wave glittery robes at me and cry.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-02 09:46 pm (UTC)And perhaps, once the blessed OBAMA takes office, you'll visit the US every so often again. REmember Minnesota, goddamit!
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-02 09:50 pm (UTC)-- Ross
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-02 09:57 pm (UTC)I'm just trying to decide how to do it just now. From a bed in the middle of the dancefloor, dressed as a dying Widow Twanky (with a costume change halfway into the Big Bad Wolf)?
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-02 10:38 pm (UTC)"I work to live, I don't live to work" you tell yourself. Toil 1, Frolicking 0. But then you get sucked into seeing life as a dichotomy of work and play when there's nothing stopping the two from overlapping or even being the same thing, which I assume is what you're striving for. Just don't expect them to be the same thing all the time, but consider calling it quits when then slowly start to become mutually exclusive.
I think learning to accept and be at peace with the monotony of life is good for the soul. The protestant work ethic on the other hand is just fucking bullshit.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-02 11:24 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-02 11:26 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-02 11:26 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-02 11:56 pm (UTC)In this song Ringo´s battery is great, it sounds strong, full of colours and playful.
George´s lead is harmonious, John´voice is
beautiful and high. The chorus are much in tune with the main voice, and Paul´s bass is one of the greatest I have ever heard, it has
its own melody, you can ever sing it.
As always, it is set where it should be.
Beatles forever!!!
But to you, Momus, let me say this: who knows what love is, and thus knows that there is no self-love that is not self-deceit (since he who loves - and it he who matters - loves only the other and essentially not himself), but that without being and remaining oneself there is no love.
i like this song by your cousin very much.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-03 12:40 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-03 12:48 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-03 12:50 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-03 12:56 am (UTC)Life 3 Writing 5 Expectation 4
Date: 2008-12-03 01:16 am (UTC)We ponder choice.
One longs for January.
I rather like the second to last track on the album
maf
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-03 02:07 am (UTC)I love writing
Date: 2008-12-03 02:23 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-03 03:39 am (UTC)