max’s sketchblog

I watched Alan Moore interview himself, and he said something that struck me, along the lines of “unless you’re actually immersed in the ideas or experiencing the feelings that you’re representing, then you can’t expect your audience to take that away from your story.”  I was taken back to my portfolio review when the panel asked why I pretty much quit illustration half-way into the program and switched to interactive art and animation, and my answer was “that’s the first work I did that people responded to.”  By Alan’s metric, it’s simple.  My artistic goal has only ever been Cleverness.  Based on my limited drawing skill, but highly-exercised analytical skills, it was only natural that programming, as a medium, would enable me to actually be clever with my work.  My audience responded.

I’m not entirely sure I want to be clever anymore.  I don’t think I have anything to add to the overarching social dialog.  It’s basically just self-congratulation.  After all, cleverness doesn’t seem to be the guiding theme in my life right now.  If I had to be totally honest… it’s loneliness, isolation, and impotence.  Sometimes I feel… like being clever is this parlor trick that I’m hoping will spontaneously make me intriguing, and like an elixir or vaudevillian cure-all, take away all my doubt and actualize me as an adult.  Other times I feel like it’s a distraction for me to not have to deal with the fact that my loneliness is the cause of my social anxiety, not an effect of it.

Hrmm.  I thought this post would be more speculative and less personal when I started it.  I guess I had to unload.  Sorry, kids :\