Form: Mini Essay

ART, INNOVATION, AND WORK.

I had a professor of film: Gary, who was then, about my age now, when I was say, 19. And at 19 my spatial dominance was still so high that it was very difficult for me to express myself – or understand how anyone could ‘be so dumb’ that the same observations were not obvious. (nerd). IT wasn’t until five or six years later that I understood the depth of difference in human abilities was not in test-taking but in what was even possible for each of us to conceive of – that we are all concept-blind, just as we can be tone-deaf, color-blind, inarticulate, or fumbling and accident prone. And late in life I have come to understand that we are also morally blind – that our genes determine the weights of our moral biases so significantly, that we cannot imagine the moral biases of those who cooperate-compete with us.

Anyway, Gary was giving me a lecture on my thoughts as an artist : “why do you want to make art?” Which I understand now, was not a question but a criticism of my treatment of art as a craft, rather than a sacred institution as it was to him.

I said I think something very close to “Because it is fun, it is interesting, and it seems to be endlessly interesting.” Which of course, was not obedient and sacred enough of an answer to give him. So he replied “Please come back and tell me when it becomes work’. By which he meant – you will only be making art when it is work. The rest is just playing.

Well, I have a few thoughts about that now that I have reached his age – I think that it’s work if you operate on the edge of our abilities. And if you operate on the edge of your abilities you will be both happy, and perceive the experience we call ‘work’ (struggle). But this is another equalitarian trap. The fact is that if you can provide an innovation for friends and family, local consumption, your nation, your civilization or man. innovate for all mankind. And your ability to work at the limit of your ability on and serve each of those markets is determined by your innate abilities – much more so than your experience of ‘work’.

For athletes, even amateur athletes – say, runners for example – perform at their limits because it makes them feel good. Some of us perform at our intellectual limits because we feel good doing so. Others of us perform at our intellectual limits because if we don’t, then WE SUFFER.

And for those of us who feel good at our limits, or suffer if we do not – the act of creating – of innovation – IS NEVER WORK. It is just exercise we must perform in order to feel good.

I sold out of my business because it was work and was harming my health. I practice my art because it is exercise that makes me feel good.

So, Gary, my question is – now that I know the answer (that it is never work to create art if one is able to create art for a market within his talents) – I also know the source of your question: that you were unable to create art of the scale you desired, and had to ‘work’ because you lacked the talent to reach the market you desired.

To ‘stretch’ or ‘reach’ is to work at the limits of your capacity, instead of working at the limits of your confidence. To work at the limit of your ability in the service of a market that you can serve – innovate for – is merely a matter of trial and error. But if you presume a market that you cannot serve, then you will never, and can never, be happy.

Work the ladder. Serve the greatest market you feel you can, and serve it well. Everything beyond that is seeking to lie to yourself: to serve yourself without adequately serving others in exchange. Once you serve a market well, then exceed that market by all means.

But dreams of glory instead of acts of market satisfaction are just fantasies to avoid reality – to avoid work at finding where one no longer must work – but experience joy. It is certainly a crime to lie. But it is equally a crime to lie to yourself.

Curt Doolittle

The Propertarian Institute

Kiev Ukraine.