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Some kind of bizarre explanation
Nov. 17th, 2010 09:16 pmI fear I have entirely forgotten how to write anything for posting.
It's gotten to be that dim & grim time of year, when the light goes away and the warmth goes away and I mostly just shut down completely. This year I'm especially sad, thinking about the windows in the house that didn't end up being ours, up on top of the hill where more light happens. Some evenings I can tell by the color of the sky that there's been a break in the clouds, way down at the western horizon, and I know it would be visible from the upper windows of the house. From where I am I can't see it at all.
And I beat myself up, mercilessly, because no matter what I do, I still can't stand the business of trying to sell any of the things I make. Putting stuff online is always painful, and taking pictures is slow, and writing ad-copy is excruciating. But none of those components are nearly as bad as getting a reaction from some interested customer. As soon as some poor soul says "Yes, please, send me many!" I go into a useless catatonic state, withdraw from the outside world completely, and shun all communication. And I stop making things, because I don't have any way of storing them, but somehow making them go away is beyond my capacity.
I'm developing a theory about the stuff I make, which is more or less like this: There's a thing that happens sometimes, where I get a terrible joke stuck in my head. Those jokes that turn up in hideously-illustrated booklets, intended for gradeschool children. They are often puns, forced, utterly unfunny. Sometimes the pun is explained in parentheses, just to make sure the reader gets it. [One was a salted (assaulted).]
At any rate, I'll get one of those jokes stuck in my head, as though it was a pop song I'd heard in the grocery store muzak. [Hold up the chicken and make it pea.] It rattles around in there, driving me batty, and the only way to get rid of it is to tell some unfortunate victim the joke. Somehow that clears it out of my head, so I can get on with my life. Sadly, this is not a nice thing to do to a person, since these jokes are not at all funny. They are embarrassing. They are painful. I am ashamed to admit that I know them in the first place, let alone feel compelled to pass them on.
Something very similar happens with the stuff I make, and the projects I do. They start with small, stupid, irritating ideas, that get stuck in my head and won't go away. The only way to clear them out is to make them physically manifest, so that somebody else can see what I've been thinking about. But showing people the things I've made feels just as horrible as telling them those jokes; it's the same overwhelming shame and embarrassment. [Because he was a common tater (commentator).]
This results also in a distressing corollary, which is that when people say they like the things I do, I have no idea how to react. (I wouldn't know how to react if I had an audience who laughed uproariously at the jokes, either.) To me, any feedback that seems enthusiastic or even positive is purely baffling, because I feel so bad about inflicting such crap on the world. I'm not doing it on purpose. It just sort of bubbles up from the unseen depths, and I push it out of my way in hopes of getting loose of the stuff. It's not something I'm proud of. I would stop, if only I knew how.
It's gotten to be that dim & grim time of year, when the light goes away and the warmth goes away and I mostly just shut down completely. This year I'm especially sad, thinking about the windows in the house that didn't end up being ours, up on top of the hill where more light happens. Some evenings I can tell by the color of the sky that there's been a break in the clouds, way down at the western horizon, and I know it would be visible from the upper windows of the house. From where I am I can't see it at all.
And I beat myself up, mercilessly, because no matter what I do, I still can't stand the business of trying to sell any of the things I make. Putting stuff online is always painful, and taking pictures is slow, and writing ad-copy is excruciating. But none of those components are nearly as bad as getting a reaction from some interested customer. As soon as some poor soul says "Yes, please, send me many!" I go into a useless catatonic state, withdraw from the outside world completely, and shun all communication. And I stop making things, because I don't have any way of storing them, but somehow making them go away is beyond my capacity.
I'm developing a theory about the stuff I make, which is more or less like this: There's a thing that happens sometimes, where I get a terrible joke stuck in my head. Those jokes that turn up in hideously-illustrated booklets, intended for gradeschool children. They are often puns, forced, utterly unfunny. Sometimes the pun is explained in parentheses, just to make sure the reader gets it. [One was a salted (assaulted).]
At any rate, I'll get one of those jokes stuck in my head, as though it was a pop song I'd heard in the grocery store muzak. [Hold up the chicken and make it pea.] It rattles around in there, driving me batty, and the only way to get rid of it is to tell some unfortunate victim the joke. Somehow that clears it out of my head, so I can get on with my life. Sadly, this is not a nice thing to do to a person, since these jokes are not at all funny. They are embarrassing. They are painful. I am ashamed to admit that I know them in the first place, let alone feel compelled to pass them on.
Something very similar happens with the stuff I make, and the projects I do. They start with small, stupid, irritating ideas, that get stuck in my head and won't go away. The only way to clear them out is to make them physically manifest, so that somebody else can see what I've been thinking about. But showing people the things I've made feels just as horrible as telling them those jokes; it's the same overwhelming shame and embarrassment. [Because he was a common tater (commentator).]
This results also in a distressing corollary, which is that when people say they like the things I do, I have no idea how to react. (I wouldn't know how to react if I had an audience who laughed uproariously at the jokes, either.) To me, any feedback that seems enthusiastic or even positive is purely baffling, because I feel so bad about inflicting such crap on the world. I'm not doing it on purpose. It just sort of bubbles up from the unseen depths, and I push it out of my way in hopes of getting loose of the stuff. It's not something I'm proud of. I would stop, if only I knew how.
