The Cult of Success: Too Much Business, Not Enough Art

I feel a rant coming on.

I've talked to several people this past week--full-time working artists--who've told me they don't get into the studio every day. How many days do you suppose they get there? Almost every day? Five days a week?

Try one or two days a week. And these are people who do this for a living, so imagine what this means for the rest of us. What are they doing the other days? Oh, come on; you know the answer to that: they're running their business.

Let's look at this, shall we? These are people--and they are in the vast majority of the people I talk to, although it's not always so severe--who are good enough at what they do to make a living at it, yet they get to spend very little time doing it because the biggest part of their time is taken up with Growing Their Business. And what takes up a huge portion of *that* time? Social media: Facebook, Twitter, Flickr. Pinterest. Instagram. Blogs.

I have every single issue of Cloth Paper Scissors Studios and Where Women Create, and I've read every single word (except the ads; I never read ads). I have the book, Where Women Create. I've always been a huge fan: I know when the drop dates are for these magazines and will nag the staff at the local Barnes and Noble until they go in the back and dig them out of the boxes and shelve them (they're notoriously bad about getting magazines on the shelves on time).

Both magazines came out this month, and I couldn't wait to get my hands on them, as usual. And, sure, there were some inspiring things in there. But for the most part, I was really disappointed. Studios is still pretty much what it's always been, I think, and I'll probably continue to buy it (I don't buy a lot of magazines; I don't have time to read magazines just for fun), but I'm worried about it, too. One of my favorite things about it has always been the floor plans, where they show the size and the placement of the furniture and the doors and windows. I love that. I love floor plans, and I love walking through empty houses: I can imagine what I would do with the space, if it were mine. I like to think of how I'd use the rooms for something other than their Real Purpose. Old houses are especially great for this: they've got all these weird little rooms, and you can imagine one as an office and one as a sewing studio and one as a gallery. In this latest issue, some of the featured studios included floor plans, but others did not, and I was disappointed. Plus I seemed to detect a disturbing trend, one that leads me to Where Women Create.

While I've always had an issue with limiting the magazine just to places where *women* create, I've given it some slack because, well, the idea--of getting a peek into people's real-life studios--was just so amazing. But here lately--and this may have been going on for a long time before it really became apparent to me--it seems this is less about where women create and more about where women grow their businesses. I'm struck by the preponderance of terms like, of course, "growing my business" but also a lot of stuff about clients and advertising, with repeated mentions of "high-end" as an adjective for all kinds of things: clients, magazines, advertising, houses, neighborhoods. If I were looking for High-End Organizational Systems, I'd know where to check for kraft-covered binders. I'd know that steel shelving systems are hip and realize inspiration boards are all the rage.

It felt like a celebrity lifestyle magazine, and maybe that's what it is. Maybe that's what people want, In These Tough Economic Times (a phrase I suggest we all avoid. Soon.). They want to know there's hope, that there are people doing well and living large, indulging their every whim because they can. Maybe that's what people need. They say that everyone secretly believes that someday they'll be rich and that that's what keeps us going. That and the belief that things will be perfect after we die and go to heaven. Otherwise, without the hope of wealth and eternal joy, more people would be taking to the streets in revolt, and wouldn't that be horrible.

What do I know? I think what people need is the inspiration to get in their own studio, whether it's a closet or a corner of the kitchen table, and make stuff. I think people need to make a LOT more stuff, and keep making stuff until they get tired of making whatever they're making and decide to try doing it a new way, try adding a twist or heading off in a new direction. Maybe learn a new technique. Resurrect one they used to use or one their grandmother taught them and try it in a new way.

But they don't have time. They don't have time because they're waking up at the crack of dawn to sit in bed and use their iPad to do all their social media and see what everyone else is up to. And you know that's EXACTLY what most of us are doing: we're checking out everyone else. What are they doing this morning? What are they saying about their book/online class/Parisian workshop? And, sure enough, everyone is tweeting like crazy about how successful things are for them--their meetings and travel plans, the launch of their book and the release of their new DVD. Oh, sure, every once in a while someone will tweet about time in the studio, but not very often. It's not sexy. It's work. Work is not sexy. Being popular is sexy: tweeting about how many phone calls you get from your publicist or your editor, tweeting about how much you travel, about how empty your Etsy shop is--that's sexy.

[Note: if your Etsy shop is empty, doesn't that mean you need to spend more time making stuff to fill it up, rather than spending time talking about how empty it is?]

What I'm seeing is that, instead of getting in there and making stuff that only you can make, people are spending their time online in this all-consuming vortex of social media, trying to edge their way into the group of The Popular Kids and hoping Somebody Important will retweet them or link to them or friend them.

This whole social media thing has just become insane. The only tv channel I ever see is The Weather Channel, which is the default setting for the television and the one that comes on when I turn it on to put in a movie. We watch Local on the 8s to know what the weather's going to do, and in the process, I get a glimpse of this most disturbing and irritating thing: the partnership with The Weather Channel and Twitter, where they show the top five trending weather-related tweet topics.

On what planet do you have to live to be interested in what other people are tweeting on their phones about the weather where they are? Why on earth do I want to spend even a nano-second hearing what people in Denver are tweeting about the snow? I understand being interested in the fact that it's snowing in Denver; I used to live in Denver. I know people who live in Denver now. I don't mind knowing what the weather there is like. But knowing that some un-named random person is tweeting that it's snowing? Of what possible use can this be? What has become of us that we want to know what random strangers are doing and thinking all day, every day? And that we think they, in turn, want to know what we're doing and thinking? That this consumption of the minutia of other people's lives has become so important to us that millions of people walk around with their phones in their hands. Not in their bags. Not in their pockets--in their hands, where they're constantly checking the stream. It's because it makes us feel a part of something larger. Which makes me think, for some reason, of John Lennon's musing about the relative popularity of the Beetles and Jesus. There's a post in there somewhere entitled, "Is Twitter the New God?" but I don't want to go there.

Why do we need to know that Artist A is having a huge run of fabulous success? Is this going to inspire us to work harder? Maybe, but the chances are that it's just going to bum us out unless we've somehow become Zen and really do believe that her success is our success, as well.

[When you meet this Zen person, please send them my way so I can interview them--they'll be such a novelty everyone will be totally entranced.]

We all love success, and we love that voyeuristic look at other people's success. We love celebrity--people who are successful at what they do. I know this is true even for the mixed-media community, no matter how people would argue that it's not about celebrity. I can look at the stats for my podcasts, and the ones where I talked to Well-Known Mixed-Media Artists have been downloaded way, way more times than podcasts with less-well-known people. And it's not that the more-well-known people's podcasts were more interesting. Some of them were really great, but some were not. Some of the unknowns had fabulously inspiring things to say, but few people know that because they saw the name and said, "Eh. Never heard of him."

Success alone isn't enough, though. Being well-known isn't enough. There are all kinds of successful people who are boring and uninspiring. Some are also selfish and vapid. Not all. Not even the majority. But just because someone has achieved success and fame of a sort doesn't mean they're fabulous. It means they've figured out how to be successful, and if that's all we want--to be successful ourselves--then following them and friending them and reading about them and looking at their studios/offices/showrooms makes sense. But if what we want instead is to fulfill our creative potential, this is not the way to do it.

I understand that people are scared about money and that they're scrambling to try to figure out a way to make enough to make ends meet. People have done really well selling e-books and e-courses and even retreat workshops on How to Be Successful at Your Biz. I understand that. But let's be really clear: being good at business isn't the same as being good at making stuff. Reading about someone else's success doesn't count as creating. Gazing enviously at the fabulous stuff other people have isn't going to bring that stuff to your house.

And setting out with the intention of selling your work and making money at it isn't the same as setting out with the intention of creating something because it's in you and it's got to come out (apologies to John Lee Hooker for jacking "Boogie Chillen").

Maybe it's just me. In fact, I'm pretty sure I'm way, way in the minority here. Other people really like checking out those who have made it and drooling over their stuff. That's why Vogue and House Beautiful are so much more popular than Craft and Make. I have no desire to spend time looking at stuff that's 1) complete and needs no input from me and 2) is so far out of my price range that I couldn't even afford the wall sconces in the powder room. If I can't look at the pages and get ideas for things I want to do--a shelving system that makes sense for fabric, a desk placement that maximizes light while minimizing glare, a way that explains "cutting on the bias" that doesn't make me shudder--then what's the point? Then it's a coffee table magazine, and that's fine: we need those. And this right there explains why Where Women Create, which used to be shelved with the craft magazines, has moved way over there next to Victoria and House Beautiful.