I could stand butt naked (or is it buck naked? I’m never sure) on a busy street corner, and nobody would notice.
That seems to be the way it is for me. I write. I photograph. I create. But I attract very little attention to myself.
In the world at large, it seems as if people are scrabbling over one another for attention. Despite talk about cancel culture and deplatforming, never have so many of us had so much access to tools designed to amplify our voices. In fact, our apparent anxiety about cancel culture and deplatforming implies that we regard widespread attention as a right. We have the right to develop a personal brand. We have the right to carry media studios in our pockets to promote that brand. We have the right to be famous.
I regard myself as a bit contrarian and, certainly when it comes to digital culture, I feel like I’m forever walking into a serious headwind. Still, I feel that my time has come. No, I don’t think I’m on the cusp of becoming famous. Only that I’m better prepared for an inevitable and impending oblivion.
In her Norton Lectures: Spending The War Without You, Laurie Anderson has this to say about our creative impulses:
We’re also the first humans who face the possibility, some say the probability, of our own extinction. And we’re the first humans who are trying to find the words for this. But here’s the thing about stories. A story is usually something you tell to somebody else. And if you’re telling a story to nobody, is it still a story? And this is our awesome job. We are the first humans to try to do this: to tell a story to nobody.
I’ve pulled the quote from the second of the CBC Ideas broadcasts starting at 36:20.
Laurie Anderson gives me hope because she makes it clear that I’ve devoted my whole life to the bleeding edge of our latest (ultimate?) cultural trend: I’m seasoned in the art of telling stories to nobody. I have no expectation of fame or even of a modest reputation, and I have no confidence in a posterity to receive my creations.
That isn’t as depressing as it sounds. It’s simply to note that I act on interior motivations. I do what I do because I have to. Obsession. Compulsion. Call it what you will. I prefer to think that I am motivated by the immediate pleasure I feel at the very moment of creation. It is a quiet and private satisfaction and it is enough.
