Why do I do it?
I am blown away by the honesty and generosity of all the responses I got to my question a couple of days ago. At the core of so many them was a similar motivation: "I make things because I must". An irrepressible impulse.
As my friend Julie said:
"For me, it is part of the essence of being
alive. The same as eating, shitting, fucking. Pretty basic."
And yet, though we are all born with this compulsion, we can, and do suppress it, leading starving, constipated, celibate lives .
I did.
My Story
At six, it was universal. We all drew, and painted, sang and sculpted. We were all architects and actors, potters and dancers. It was innate and natural.
I lived around the world as a child, in Lahore and London, in Pittsburgh and Canberra, studied at St. John�s and on a kibbutz. I could quickly fall in with any other kid and we�d pretend to be mountain climbers or scientists, we could build forts out of sofa cushions or turn a refrigerator box into a theater. I wrote and illustrated books. In a school play, I played a dog that saved a family from their burning house. I had an alter ego, Roger Watford, an English lord who smoked a pipe and carried a sword. I made pirate maps, soaked them in tea for verisimilitude. I wore my Halloween costume year round.
Twenty years later, I wore ties. I drew only when doodling on the phone. I never went to galleries or museums or playgrounds. I watched golf on TV.
I was not an artist any more.
When I was a eighteen, I wrote a college application essay on why I felt that writing rather than drawing was the more appropriate and useful medium of expression for me. It came down to a simple equation. Artists starved. Writing was useful in all aspects of business.
Princeton had a painting department. I assumed that its members were lazy, unwilling to take on a proper major or to attend a real art school. Architect students worked notoriously long hours. Fools, again. At best, I�d heard, they�d make $30 grand a year.
By twenty one, I�d become cynical, rigid and unimaginative. I was ready to get to work.
I had talked myself out of going to art school because I believed that the only way to make a living would be to be a �commercial� artist which seemed horribly compromised. My experience working for a local paper had led me to believe that journalists were mere observers rather than participants. My friends who went into investment banking were total sellouts. Three months after graduation, I fell into advertising. It was a job, and got me out of my parents house.
For the next twenty years, it was what I did. I was �a creative�. Noun, rather than adjective. In Harper�s, I read an essay that concluded �Creative people in advertising are artists � with nothing to say.� It seemed apt.
The advertising profession is divided into creatives and account people. Creatives are divided into art directors and copywriters. I was the latter and yet I drew more and better than the art directors I worked with. I had endless opinions about the visual side of the business but I was adamant that I was a copywriter. I would not be judged as a visual person. I was not an artist.
Despite all the meetings I sat through, all the product I moved, all the concessions and compromises I made, the urge to make things could not be completely quashed. First of all, I made ads. I worked with photographers and directors and editors and composers to make polished little 30 second turds. We all threw ourselves most fervently into these productions, being adamant about the tiniest things, the shade of blue of a models blouse, the placement of a comma. We would fall on our swords all the time, so intent were we to assert our creative will.
This inner artist plagued me like homosexuality must plague those still in the closet, I would jam it down, insisting it was impractical, that I was not good enough, that it was a huge waste of time and then that creative urge would pop its head out somewhere else
I was not a painter (though I did paint at home, balancing huge canvases on my dining room chairs because I would not commit to having an easel).
But I was not really a Writer either and stopped writing the fiction I had pumped out in school.
When I was twenty three, I wrote a play and some producers started to raise money to put it on. We did a reading and Kevin Bacon played the lead. I did nothing to help. The production grew until the plans were to try to open it Off-Broadway at the Henry Miller theater, then on Broadway itself. I stood by. Eventually the plans grew so big, they collapsed. I did nothing to revive the play. I�m not sure if I still even have a copy.
Three different times, I bought myself a keyboard and set up music lessons. Each time, I sabotaged myself after a week, missing practice and lessons because I was so busy at work.
I designed and built the furniture for our apartment out of birds� eye maple. But then told myself we could afford to replace it at Ikea.
I got a book contract to write a book of highly subjective funny essays about New York bars. I wrote 250 pages but then my editor left the house. My new editor wanted to make changes. I refused. The book faded away but I held on to the advance.
I would come home and cook, hand grinding spices, rolling out raviolis, shopping for months for the perfect knife, making elaborate dishes that I would eat by myself, standing over the sink. I worked hard on what I wore, scouring vintage stores for hand made suits, collecting hundreds of ties, dressing and redressing myself to get the look just so.
Someone gave me a harmonica and I kept it in the shower where I would play it till the pipes ran cold. Whenever someone in our family had a birthday, I would develop elaborate themes to my presents and print my own wrapping paper.
I saw every movie that came out, hundreds a year, telling myself it was part of my job and tax deductible to boot, I watched them intently, memorizing camera placements, noting editing techniques, the names of key grips.
I made my girlfriend elaborate hand made gifts. I wrote and illustrated books for her, even epic poems. I convinced my boss to let me have a laser printer in my office, and then worked behind closed doors to print my books on special papers, to make slip cases and design my own type. I would finesse each piece over and over, readjusting the kerning, the leading, till it was perfect. I worked for months on each item, a single edition of one book. I was doing it for my love. But I didn�t deal with the fact that I was doing it because I had to.
Long before we became parents, I made intense home movies, costuming Patti and driving her to interesting locations. I drove her in a car I had bought simply because it was beautiful, a 1962 Mercury Monterey that was 18 feet long and two tone, cornflower blue and white. It was completely impractical, far too big for Manhattan and I rarely drove it but I polished it and reupholstered it, a gleaming feast for the eye.
Fade out.
Another decade passes. I am married. I have gained a son and thirty pounds.
My career has continued to climb. I am at the top of my field, running the creative department of an agency.
But I am suffocating.
I am under enormous pressure to make other people produce creative ideas. Money is inextricably wound up in everything. All our efforts are judged and harshly.
I slowly come to realize I have been leading a false life for so long, that I am not who I am pretending to be. I have been using my ability to make things purely in terms of how it will provide money to my family, There is no joy in the process. The things I make are completely at the behest of others, I am making advertising campaigns for investment banks, for people who sell weapons systems, for chemical producers and management consultants. I am making more money than ever have and yet I fell completely bankrupt. Nothing I do is for me. I am bitter and insomniac.
A few years before, I had found one outlet that meant a lot to me. I had begun an illustrated journal and had become quite good at drawing the little things I encountered every day. I took a class in bookbinding and learned to make my own journals. For a while, it was a great escape. But then I�d stopped that too. My position as creative director meant there was no timefor such things, for the folderol of making things that did not contribute to the agency�s bottom line. I locked my journals away and for five years I focused exclusively on my job, twelve hours a day. My wife grew distant but I didn�t notice. I had no friends outside of work but no time for them in any case. Whatever little burblings of creativity used to have, that I channeled into cooking and fashion and gifts was 100% channeled into servicing clients.
The camel�s back finally broke.
Through my job I started to meet some of the top graphic designers, people like Stefan Sagmeister, Woody Pirtle, Paul Sahre, and as I talked to them, I found myself admitting how much I hated what I did, how lost I felt. I was supposed to be their client but I treated them like mentors. I so envied their lives, making all sorts of things for people, working on their own projects, committing themselves to social change, turning down work if they felt it was wrong, living on a fifth of what I was making and seeming well rounded and complete. Finally one of them suggested I get back to my journaling. Hesitantly, I did.
I let art back in the door and suddenly the walls started to crack. Within a month, I had a book contract. A few months later, I had a second, this one to publish my illustrated journals. Before long, I had an agent and was no longer a creative director.
Instead, I was me.
Comments
Thanks you so much for sharing your story. Your words and your pictures are so inspirational. As a young artist/writer still in school, I am thankful to have someone share their creative experiences with me. I re-read those rejection letters from publishers that you posted at least once a week. I hope that sooner, rather than later, I will have the courage and conviction to work so hard in getting my work published. Though I do not draw or paint much now, I think of you as sort of a mentor I've never met. I don't think you would be offended by my saying that I hope your story and your work will help me to avoid making the mistakes that you did when you were my age. I don't want to fall into the same trap, denying my creative self. Again, thank you just for sharing yourself. It means more than perhaps we know.
Posted by: Kyle | April 16, 2004 01:44 PM
Wow. This is sooo thought provoking for me.
Posted by: azura | April 16, 2004 01:52 PM
I have to echo azura -- wow. And let me echo Kyle too -- thank you for sharing this with us. Powerful, brutally honest, this post was amazing, and I'm glad glad glad you found yourself.
Posted by: finelyspungirl | April 16, 2004 03:24 PM
You truly inspire me to believe that someday I will not be churning out this bird cage liner that I do everyday! That I will live my bliss and reappear as who I want to be rather than who I have become. Thank you.
Posted by: sheila | April 16, 2004 04:13 PM
Thank you for this beautiful, honest post, it really resonated with me.
Posted by: Kirsty Hall | April 16, 2004 04:42 PM
So there I was. First grade. I was really excited to go to school. But my excitement was short lived. They put me in a special ed class with severely handicapped children. “He’s a remedial,” I heard them tell my mum. “He’s got a problem. He’s too creative.” Too creative was their diagnosis of the dyslexia that went undetected and plagued me throughout school. “What’s a remedial?” I kept on asking, until I was mainstreamed in third grade. “A special person,” said my mom.
My 5th grade report card said, “Trevor will go very far if he stops dreaming.”
I was a very unhappy little boy, but the cartoon strips and little books I created as a result of my “dreaming” saved my life. So did loving parents. I once said to my dad, “When I grow up I want to write and illustrate books.” “Why wait until then,” he said. “Do it now.” And I did, with such passion and hope.
In high school I tried to take art as one of my elective subjects. Mr. Ulrich Louw said, and I quote, “You’re not talented enough to join my art class, go and do history or something, boy.” After that, a part of my soul shut down and I did not pick up a pencil for 21 YEARS!
I battled through college and purely by chance got a job as a gopher in an advertising agency. I once leaned over the boss’s desk and asked what he was doing. He told me he was trying to come up with a headline. I rattled one off, which he used and much to everyone’s surprise the ad won a Clio award. Needless to say, I was hired as a copywriter (who couldn’t spell) and quickly moved up through the ranks to become a Creative Director. I made great money, but the job was soul destroying because all I was doing was convincing people to buy things they didn’t need. At every opportunity I wrote little children’s books. I was fired by one agency because, “You’re pretty obsessed with those damned children’s stories.”
Ten years ago (after not drawing for twenty one years) I found myself out of a job because the agency I was working for closed. I decided not to find a job, but to write full time. I wrote a number of children’s books. There was only one artist who I thought would be able to illustrate my books, but he happened to be a little busy illustrating for Roald Dahl. Besides, I don’t think Quentin Blake would have had the time to look at an unpublished dreamer's badly spelled work.
Then it happened. It was the most powerful and amazing thing I have ever had the pleasure of experiencing. I picked up a pencil and started to draw illustrations for my book. It felt like I had inserted a giant power cable from the universe directly into my heart. The creative surge left me stunned and awed. I have not stopped drawing and sketching since. I have written and illustrated over thirty books since that day. My books have been translated into 14 different languages and more than a million copies are in print!
People often ask if there is an actual defining moment when everything changed. There is, but it happened when I was an eighteen year old boy. The moment happened way back then, but it only made itself available to me that brilliant day ten years ago when I picked up a number 2 pencil…
The defining moment. (Optional reading.)
It happened one summer. I was spending my vacation helping my grandfather fix fences on his farm. Although I was only fifteen, he let me drive the truck through the woods and across the open fields to where the fences needed mending. During the winter, the cattle would use the fence posts to scratch their itching bodies. They would bend and push the fence posts right over. Sometimes the poles would even snap.
It was while mending a broken fence pole that my grandfather had the heart attack. He was in front of me, walking back to the truck after we’d been struggling for hours trying to wrap some barbed wire around a new
Pole we’d sunk.
The wire had cut and scratched both of us and we were looking forward to getting back to the truck for some Cokes we had in the cooler.
One second his powerful six-foot frame was striding through the spring grass ahead of me and the next second he was lying on the ground gasping for air.
I couldn’t believe, how just a few seconds out of sixty-eight years of life, had suddenly aged him ten years. He looked so old and afraid. I’d never seen my grandfather afraid.
I don’t think I’ve ever been more scared in my life. A powerful surge of adrenaline jerked my muscles into motion. I left my grandfather lying in the grass and I ran. First one way, then the other. Then I stopped. I wasn’t sure which way to go. My heart was sending surges of blood into my
head. I started crying. I didn’t want him to die. Spending summers with my grandfather got me through life. I didn’t want the days of sitting in
the barn and talking about the old times to end. I still wanted to hear stories about the time he and his family escaped from the old country.
I could listen to those stories a thousand times. I didn’t want him to go.
We still had so many things to talk about.
Then I got angry. Grandfathers weren’t supposed to die when
grandchildren were only twelve. I ran back to where he was lying. He was clutching at his chest. His face was drawn back, hideously distorted with pain.
I tried to lift him but he was too heavy. I grabbed his feet and dragged him towards the truck. There was nothing else I could do. I had to save this magnificent man and the only way I was going to do that was by getting him to a doctor.
The adrenaline and fear of losing him must have given me strength I did not normally have, because once we reached the truck, I managed to lift him and half push, half roll him onto the seat.
Even though I was only fifteen, my grandfather had taught me to drive and I drove through the field and bounced across every bump I had so carefully avoided earlier that morning. (While teaching me to drive, my grandfather playfully slapped me on the back of the head every time I hit the slightest bump. That wasn’t important anymore.)
I got back to the house and honked the horn madly. As I was about to jump out of the truck and run for help, my grandfather reached up, and with the last bit of strength left in his body, grabbed my shirt collar. He almost choked me as he tried to pull himself up.
"Do what you love to do," he whispered. I never followed my dreams and now they are going to die. Don’t lose that creative magic you have been blessed with. You have a gift that you have not unwrapped."
I looked at his face. The sweet, kind face that meant so much to me.
Those warm eyes that told me stories and listened to my stupid crazy ideas, were slowly fading. The light in them was gone.
Later at the hospital, a terrible pain hugged my soul and squeezed me until I found it hard to breathe. I felt so helpless. If only I could have borrowed some time from the end of my life and given it to him, I would have. I wanted him around for a long time, but my love for my grandfather
was no match for the nature of the universe.
That night, while I was asleep, a major heart attack stole the last gasp of life from his very being. The hand of fate reached down and carelessly grabbed his soul, wrenching it painfully from his body. At that moment, his eyes closed forever.
The breeze took my grandfather’s last sigh and carried it through the whispering trees into the winds of time and along with it went my childhood.
My grandfather said. “You have a gift that you have not unwrapped.” I have unwrapped my gift and the gift was the key to my creative soul.
Thank you Danny for reminding me of my grandfather's words..
Posted by: Trevor Romain | April 16, 2004 07:16 PM
I apologise for some age mistakes in the piece above. Typical of my learning difference. I was 15 when my grandfather died. Not 12 or 18 as I suggested. Dyslexia rules KO!
Posted by: Trevor Romain | April 16, 2004 07:23 PM
Such moving beautifully written stories of your struggles, Danny and Trevor, thank you for sharing!!
Posted by: Marja-Leena | April 16, 2004 07:32 PM
I wonder what it is that makes what others think --- or even what we *think* we should do -- so powerful?
All I can say is thank goodness whatever it is, I don't possess it. These stories -- my goodness, the time lost! Although I have had stretches of time in which my painting and drawing was at a minimum, too -- and I understand the pain of the indescribable emptiness that comes from not making.
Posted by: Laurie | April 16, 2004 07:49 PM
These accounts are absolutely spellbinding. They just give me chills. Words are inadequate. Wow. So inspiring.
Posted by: Kateri | April 17, 2004 12:08 PM
Danny, This made me cry. Thank you!
Even after I started to call myself an artist I doubted the title because I was making quilts. A word that brings to mind craft, homemade, granny squares and the like. But I have come around. My art is sewn in the manner of quilts, but I dye and design my own fabrics, threads and yarns. I create imagery. I feel at one with myself when I am doing it. The world expands and I am at peace. What more is there? Thank you Danny. It is a brave thing to embody your Self. Thank you for baring yourself.
Posted by: Melly | April 17, 2004 01:31 PM
no words..no comment...thank you
Posted by: fern | April 17, 2004 02:00 PM
beautiful and honest.
may peace and love be with you on this new journey.
bruce
Posted by: bruce | April 17, 2004 05:13 PM
Great stories - I am going through something similar, but I am at the midway point & I am not even half-as-accomplished as you were then. For the last 12 years I've almost entirely stopped drawing except to make greeting cards that I give away to strangers for free. Recently I volunteered to make a couple of illustrations for a low-budget anthology. I submitted a few articles to various newsletters for no payment. It seems like I can only do free things. I spend most of my time making money in crappy survival jobs. A fortune-teller told me I will never have a career unless I work in a fish cannery...that's why you should never go to fortune-tellers.
When I was in high school my parents told me they would disown me if I tried to become an artist. It was kind of sad to hear my classmates applying for art colleges while I went to university to study economics - which I dropped out of after one class & went into Asian studies...I described this change to my parents as having a definite economic benefit, after all Asia was getting to be pretty big on the news. Of course the real reason I took Asian studies was just to read Chinese literature...then I started sneaking into art history courses and I began tutoring art history students. I ended up as a copy writer, gave up that job because I didn't like living in Asia and now am unhappily unemployed back in North America.
So why do I do what I do? Someone once said I am always so absorbed in my art that I kind of forget about everything else.
Plus I really love looking at things. If someone hasn't drawn or painted what I want to see, I'll do it myself.
Sorry about the rambling, selfish post...
Posted by: Maktaaq | April 17, 2004 05:44 PM
I am so moved by your honesty as well as your passion, Danny. Everything happens for a reason, it seems.
And to Trevor, may your Grandfather's spirit always be by your side. What a brave soul you are.
Hugs to you both.
Posted by: Sande | April 17, 2004 10:48 PM
you continue to be an inspiration. thank you.
Posted by: anke | April 18, 2004 05:01 PM
Thanks for the great story. Your blog has got me drawing again, something I hadn't done in 20 years. I assumed that "grown-ups don't draw" (unless they're professional artists). Now I know better.
Posted by: MG | April 19, 2004 12:43 AM
Oh, my. Thank you to all of you for sharing of yourselves. In stories. In pictures. Aren't we all seeing the message here? From Danny, from Trevor, from so many of you...What are your unwrapped gifts? Who's inside that you're not honoring yet? Let it out. Live your passion. Find the courage. Honor your true self. Easy to say. Hard to do. The only way to live a true life.
I think of my grandmother, tiny and weakened from a life of illness, knitting up a storm. She told me, "Honey, every day, do something. Something for you. Nobody says on their deathbed,'I wish I'd done more housework.' You get out there and live your life."
My house is dusty. I don't meet all my obligations. I'm no social butterfly. The laundry is piling up. But my journals are getting full. Time to make more. And smile, smile, smile. So much to do and learn. Thanks, Gram. And Danny. And Trevor... -Lisa
Posted by: Lisa | April 19, 2004 02:38 PM
thank you so much for sharing your story. i'm currently (and have been for quit a long time) working an office job that i can't stand. i find myself looking for creative things to do rather than work. i'll write people letters on my own drawn "fancy" paper, i look forward to getting an order from my sister & i's online store just so i can decorate the envelope.
your story was very inspiring to read.
Posted by: amanda | April 20, 2004 09:15 AM
It's so great to hear everyone's stories about their retreats from, and rushes towards creativity!
It's extremely important because we learn we aren't alone in these things! One person's experience may inspire another to follow their heart's desire!
Thanks for the questions, Danny. (I'll probably email you a brief answer to them sometime, even though topics will have moved on.. Right now I'm cutting back my computer time to organise some things in my life..)
The vacation sketches are wonderful! Peaceful tropical locations are the best for refreshing body, mind and soul!
I heard the same thing about the coconuts killing people, Jack! Who'da thunk it?
Posted by: Amy | April 20, 2004 11:22 PM
danny- i love the suit...i mean the site. but it's now april 21 and you haven't posted anything new sdince 4/16. come on man...please?
Posted by: phyllis walhan | April 21, 2004 05:54 AM
Exploring a few links this morning, I landed on your journal. What a wonderful entry. I myself am no stranger to these life-destroying phases we can embrace. You write of it with great insight and honesty. Early in my day, you have made me think. About what I want to do with the rest of the morning, the day, the week, the year. My problem is generally always just waiting for something - A can't be put into practice before B, C, D and E are in place, for instance. Though not exactly denying creativity, I am always "to-do-list"-ing it. Putting it off, finding excuses NOT to do it NOW, making sure that projects I am excited about and creative schemes I am hatching don't ever get off the ground. But, as your journal entry reminds me, life is flying by. When I look back later, I don't want the things I chose to do with my time to amount to a pot of beans.
Posted by: Melissa | April 21, 2004 11:41 AM
Thank you Danny for inspiring us.
It's amazing how many of us put our talents on hold in order to fit into an industrial meatgrinder. Talent does out itself, fortunately, so I only have to make up for lost time.
I have found your site to be a great inspiration for other artists who have put their artistic endeavors on hold. Keep up the good work.
Posted by: David St Lawrence | April 21, 2004 07:27 PM
This entry has become my life raft.
I printed it out and carry it around with me at work like a religious inspirational.
Thank you.
Posted by: Donavan Freberg | April 23, 2004 06:16 PM