- May 19, 2023
Over the last week, I’ve been doing a lot more reflecting on what it means to publish work.
I heard an interesting perspective recently- A content creator named CJ the X said in a video, “To never publish your art is selfish.” I’d never really considered it that way. I have a lot of work that I’ve never published. For me, I’ve never seen much of a reason to share work publicly- Who cares anyway? Nobody is looking, what’s the point?… I’ve started to realize— The point is that someone else *might* find meaningful value it.
All my life, I’ve been inspired by people and stories and works in the world around me, and experiencing those things has helped me understand myself and grow as a person and an artist. Every artist exists in a big long line of influences from other artists, and from the culture surrounding them. (These lines are more like a web if you really think about it…) If you never publish work, does the line end with you? Do you exist as a point on the web from which nothing else attaches?
It’s not about being self important, it’s about being responsible for the work you’ve consumed and the things you’ve been able to realize about the world through the work you’ve created. It’s about understanding that if you’re going to spend your time and energy making something meaningful to you… you owe it to everyone who put time and energy in to you to present that thing so that it might contribute to someone else’s life, too.
Sometimes I think about what it means to go to space. It didn’t just take 20 years (or however long) to develop and build a rocket, It didn’t even take one lifetime, it took hundreds of years of compounding human existence. It took generations of math and engineering- it took infrastructure, and the entire lives and energy of the people who built the infrastructure. It took the people who work in restaurants so that all those people would have somewhere to eat. It took the entire world and everything it took to create that world to make it so building a rocket to space was possible.
I’m not in a hurry to get massive popular attention. I’m realizing that I need to be seen if I want my work to touch and enrich the lives of people. I’ve never been (and I’m still not) infatuated with the idea of being famous just to be famous. I want to grow a following because I want my work (if it means something to people) to be in a position where it can be seen by the people who might actually get something out of it.
- May 11, 2023
Updated: May 19, 2023
This week, I've been continuing to make sure everything looks and behaves like it should before people actually start looking at it. I connected various social media pages together, and published the bare-bones version of my Patreon.
I did a little research on content filtering algorithms last night, and I'm beginning to understand the importance of good tags and metadata. I've definitely been neglecting this kind of stuff so far, but honestly I'm not expecting things to take off right away. Personally, I'm much happier building up a body of work that I'm comfortable letting a general audience see, before trying super hard to get a lot of people to actually see it. I know this is pretty counter-business brained, but I have no reason to rush right now.
Existing more online over the last few years, I've realized that stuff that just gets people to click on it is not actually that important. The creative people I really admire are able to make a living by developing a consistent (if smaller) community of supporters, rather than creating viral nonsense just for the hell of it. I think if you make something that's high quality and rewarding to engage with, you'll be able to develop a community of people who enjoy it.
A big part of this project over the last year or so has been building all the *extra* things (like this website, the social media accounts, this blog, the merch shop, the secret merch shop...etc...) At first, I didn't quite know why I wanted/ felt I needed to make these things. It felt like something you had to do to be taken seriously as an artist/ musician/ creative person in the world right now. But I'm beginning to realize that these things are important because they contribute to the overall experience I'm creating through the work. Creating a satisfying, interesting, worthwhile thing is something I think a lot about as an artist, and this pursuit should be no different. Creating and understanding the context of a piece of work contributes a lot to how it will be appreciated. I've always put a lot of care into the details surrounding how/when/why an interaction with a work of art happens, and I hope this kind of intention shows and is felt in the final product.
- May 4, 2023
Updated: May 9, 2023
This week I've been working on setting up/ cleaning up social media accounts.
... Can I be honest? I quite dislike social media. It makes me anxious just thinking about it. I feel much more comfortable in a format where I can iterate and edit and change things till I feel like whatever I'm working on is effectively saying what I want it to say. I know I'm not alone on this. Many of the other artists/ poets/ creative people I've known have felt similarly. Posting constantly to social media can feel antithetical to the task that I want to do professionally, which involves lot of revision and precision. As an artist, I do want to share my thoughts and feelings, but I don't feel like a couple off handed words or photos aren't the way I want to do that. I get uncomfortable with how firm and direct the messaging is in a platform like that. Maybe I'm thinking about it wrong? Maybe I'm taking it too seriously? It just feels weird to me to publish something that I'm not supposed to take seriously...
But for everything I dislike about using social media, it feels like a necessary part of trying to release any big project into the world right now. So follow go ahead and "drop a follow!" lol. https://www.facebook.com/people/Thomas-Marn/100092565421512/
Right now, the plan is to update these social media feeds with similar content to what I'm posting here (if a bit less personal/rambling). But who knows!- as I get better at social media in general, the types of content I post on each might differentiate.