delusion & reality

on believing in yourself, operating in an adversarial system, and fear as a direction for change

Section of English Champion Cottage from the Book of Bread

I’m watching someone hold one of the most surprising books I’ve found recently. “Tasty Taters” is a cookbook for potatoes, shaped like a potato bound with a small spiral ring.

J and I met up earlier today to catch up in front of the large mirror public artwork in Patricia’s Green. We examine our mosaic of reflections in the looming sculpture and flail our limbs to see our mirror images dance and punch each other at absurd angles. As each of my reflections meet and intertwine, I imagine each living in a parallel universe—the multitudes that my life could have become until this moment and from this moment onwards.

We’ve wandered to what appears to be a gathering of popups—a small display of rare books (reasonably priced!) and creative beverages. When we sit down with our drinks, a man compliments my necklace and asks me if I’m a designer. I pause for a moment, then reply “I’m an artist.”

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With the territory of being an artist and an independent creator comes both the weight of having dreams as well as the delusion those dreams demand of you.

The reality is that most people won’t make it, that our system barely allows artists and independent creative to survive let alone thrive. The delusion is convincing yourself that you are the exception to the norm. It's the only solution offered for pushing through the broken logic to live each day, a willful blindness to bet all your resources on yourself over and over again.

I’ve walked this line between delusion and reality for most of my past 2+ years working independently. I’ve had to look past odds and go for opportunities that seemed far outside what I could manage. And it worked. I've been able to collaborate with people and organizations that I had dreamed of being in community with. I've been able to share my work internationally and discover how to make tools that people can use in their daily lives.

But my delusion has also pushed me to look past reality. In reality, I have failed to sufficiently share and distribute my work. For the people who do experience my work, there are a lot who are touched and moved—expressing the impact in heartfelt emails and words. But at the same time, the scale is too small to make a living. I have built a small, tight-knit community, but not a business or an audience. In many ways, I've succeeded at what I set out to accomplish, but I've been avoiding the question of how I turn that goal into something actually sustainable in the capitalist world we live in. I don’t have the spread that I need to get the kind of inbound interest to make a living off my art. And my projects, while provoking and compelling, lack of something that makes them appeal to a mainstream audience.

Instead of confronting this problem and trying to figure out solutions to it, I’ve been running away from the discomfort. I’ve protected myself by avoiding engaging deeply with the mechanics of going viral on social media because I want to reject the system we exist in where artists and independent creatives are forced to distribute their work through these platforms. I've also protected myself from the embarrassment of failure having to say I tried to go viral and couldn't figure it out.

How do you find the right balance between delusion and reality? On one hand are people like Eric Barone who hole themselves up in their room for several years and create a breakout success like Stardew Valley. On the other hand, there are countless others who have tried similar paths only to fail to ever have their story be seen. The thought crossed my mind the other day—how do you know when to stop? How do you know when it isn't working?

I feel a deep fear rise up in my body even writing these words down. I don't want to face the possibility of failure. The idea of it repels me like an intense allergic reaction. I watched a video that said that your fear is the strongest signal for pointing you towards what needs to change. Perhaps the climax of my fear is the signal for being on the boundary between my delusion and my reality? Perhaps now's the best time to make a decision on how I want to begin from here.

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Sometimes I wonder if I have enough delusion in me to make it as an artist.

I think a core tension I feel towards going viral is a fear of power. I've been reading The Power Broker, the Pulitzer-winning account of Robert Moses' domination of New York City, and it tells an epic story of how a young idealist (within whom I saw lots of similarities to myself in the ambitious dreams of public improvements, minus the patronizing savior attitude) changes themselves to embrace power for the sake of his dreams, only to lose sight of his original purpose. By compromising his values to achieve his goals, he lost the way to achieve his goals and began creating public works for the sake of their achievement rather than their end impact on people.

In the context of our current economic system, independent creatives face a similar dilemma. All the pressure conspires to force you into playing by the rules of rat race that pits creators against each other in an all-out brawl: go viral and gain an audience, get a breakout art show or press coverage, or secure an exclusive collaboration with a well-known brand to put you on the map. The options are always positioned as a zero-sum game. Your numbers go up only if you are taking attention from another. You get a show only by beating out the others pining for the same gallery space. You get the resources and funding to give an honest try at your dream by beating out all the other proposals for the few available grants. If you want to change the system, it feels like you have to first play by the rules to gain the access, influence, and power in order to change it.

Is there a different path? Can you inch towards a sustainable living working to realize your dreams while advocating for and pushing towards a world where we, as a society, can dedicate many of our members to creating cool, novel, thought-provoking things? Can you create spaces that are radically inviting to community events and pop-ups as well as financially stable? Can you create a large social media following while breaking the parasocial norms of these relationships and providing material value exchanges between members?

I'm not sure, but I'm tired of wondering in hypotheticals and avoiding facing the dilemma head-on. It seems like the only way to find out is to confront my fear and engage with the system, studying it like a live ecosystem, and slowly, surely discover how to play the race on my own terms, my own way.

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Updates

1. If you’d like to follow me on my new social journey, I’ve been doing a mini-challenge of talking to the camera for 30 days on TikTok (reminiscent of my challenge to write 100 mini-essays in 2021). When I become more confident, I’ll be trying to tell better stories about my work and projects in short videos on Instagram as well. Are you an avid video watcher or creator? Do you have advice or ideas for what I should try? Let me know in a reply or comment! (Thanks to Nolen and Morry for chatting with me about this already)

2. My work was published in Digital Frontier, and I talked about my practice with Sam for Inventory-ing. It’s a strange feeling to see large pictures of things you made with your hands show up in a beautiful print magazine. It reminds me of the inherent power of beautiful physical objects and the feeling I strive for in my object work.

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