Something you’ll probably notice me saying a lot if you follow my work in any way is that I do not like the idea of promotion in art. I often repeat myself, but this is a very important philosophical point in life for me worth repeating again. I know it sounds pretentious or stupid to stress this point, but I feel it very deeply and I will repeat it again because who cares. This is a free website and I can do pretty much whatever I want, it doesn’t matter.
If I had to break this discussion down into easily understandable categories it would be like this: there is promotion, and then there is organic reach. I would argue that these two titles dictate specific types of artists and behaviour in humans: there are the fake artists, the marketers and shameless whores of the art world with no souls who are just making meaningless noise for other people without souls (these are the people doing more promotion than actual production of work), and there are the real artists who are primarily just working at their craft (these are what I’d call the organic reach people).
This all might sound like pretentious, complicated nonsense that is the result of overthinking, and that may be the case. You are entitled to your opinion, and I don’t care about it. But there is an important distinction to be made here that I feel is worth discussing because it’s noteworthy and possibly helpful to people that matter. The key difference between these two categories and types of people (stick with me here: I am still talking about promotion/fake artists and organic reach/real artists) is that their whole approach to artistic work is diametrically opposite. It is still possible for these two types of people to work together and have some type of working relationship (Hollywood is filled with many of these types of examples), but I would still maintain they hold completely different attitudes to art.
Here is why: a real artist that makes stuff is usually suffering from some kind of compulsion in life to make whatever it is they feel they have to make. It might not even be a need to make the current thing they happen to be working on, it is often just a compulsion to create work, period. It doesn’t matter what it is, but it has to be something. It is a fundamental drive, an itch they constantly need to scratch. These are the artists worth paying attention to because what they are doing is mandatory, and must exist. These people have no other option but to work. They cannot turn their brain off, or they choose not to (by not doing certain things like other people do, like going to therapy, taking medications, drinking alcohol, using drugs unnecessarily to numb themselves, losing themselves in their sexual appetites, etc). This type of art is the closest thing we get to knowing god or some kind of higher power, in my view. Because these people are effectively possessed for their whole lives, it’s almost like god is speaking through them. This is how we get masterpieces like your favourite films or novels: they were pieces of work that had to be made, or the person making it would have no other option but to kill themselves. It was the only outlet they had for their excess energy.
I would consider myself one of these people. I have redirected almost all of my excess energy toward creative purposes, and I am always working on something or developing some idea. I am not saying what I do is always necessarily great or amazing, but that it arrives from a need to do so. It is always coming from a pure place; I don’t make things in order to achieve some kind of monetary reward or a pat on the back or some other type of beneficial result. For people like me, the completion of the work itself is its own reward due to the fact that it temporarily cures whatever issues I have going on up there, whether it’s an inability to stop thinking about something shitty that’s bothering me that day or whatever else. (To give you one quick example, I am currently working on a novel about love because things with a girl didn’t work out, and this is the best way I can think of to process my understanding of what occurred in a productive manner). The work is an intrinsic reward in itself. The opportunity to create artistic work and write a novel is like winning an award, even if absolutely no one reads it or buys it or gives a shit when it’s done, if that makes sense.
I believe art should exist only for its owner at first. I know that sounds entirely contradictory to what art is, because if you make a movie you want it to be seen, and if you make a song you want it to be played. If you’re a comedian, you obviously need an audience or there’s no show. However, what I’m saying is: that aspect comes much later. The spark that causes you to work should be the most important thing for you. An artist should do whatever it is they do to entertain themselves before anyone else. The funniest comedians to me are the people who you can tell are primarily saying things to make themselves laugh first and foremost. This natural enjoyment leads to other people enjoying your work if it’s any good. If you make something just to get sold and to tell other people about, I think your energy is flowing in the wrong direction. Artistic work should come from a compulsion that forces the person to make whatever it is.
To continue on the comedy example: you can see this play out in comedians who had dark pasts, or experienced some kind of real suffering in their lives versus their usually less funny peers who became comics because they saw it as a hobby and simply just liked comedy. For the first group of people: their comedy was born out of survival. Maybe they had an abusive stepfather, or got the shit kicked out of them in high school and mercilessly bullied. Or some other tragedy they never properly recovered from, like a family member’s sudden death. Or endless rejection from women. These people became funny by nature, because to survive their shitty lives they had no other choice. For the second group: they will always be less funny because they had no real reason to do so, it was not a matter of life and death. This is what I’m trying to say about artists as a whole: there are two kinds and they can be understood by looking at the promo/organic categories.
For the promo/fake artists, these types of people are often doing something for the sole purpose of achieving some kind of extrinsic reward. These are the types of people you see paying for “sponsored posts.” These people make Tiktoks for attention. They post on social media a lot for no reason. They are stuck in the thought loop designed by Silicon Valley for people like them unable to question things and think for themselves. These types of people will never be about their ideas so much (if they’ve even got any of their own), as they are about the promotion of their ideas. They want to be told by people how great they are, and their interest is not in the doing or creation. Real artists will always understand that genuine recognition for something is not owed to you or part of the artistic process in any way. That comes later, and it may not even happen at all, or in one’s lifetime. You don’t tend to hear this kind of thing because no one wants to tell a classroom full of hopeful art kids, “Your work might not pay off. Sorry about that,” but it is the truth.
By the way, one important thing to note here is: I am not saying it is somehow more noble to never promote one’s work and to not make any money, all I’m saying here is that I’ve never been a fan of artists who seem to aim their energies more at the commerce side of things rather than the actual work aspect. There should be a balance, of course, but I’d take it a step further and say that it’s best to forget about promotion altogether. Promotion should be something a genuine artist rarely even thinks about because they’re so busy doing whatever it is they’re working on. You should be so exhausted from working at your project or projects that you have no energy left over to bullshit and talk about it endlessly. The work should do the talking for you, and you should get back to work right after. I’ve never been able to understand how an artist could take a certain amount of time off, for example. It’s one thing to go on vacation and you do need your time to recover your creative energies and to relax, etc. But I don’t think a real artist could ever take a really long hiatus without thinking about doing something creative or working on something else they weren’t doing before: they are always driven by the compulsion to create.
Moving on from the categories, there is one main reason why I do not like to promote, and that is because: the average person has an inability to understand the separation between an artist and their work. People simply do not understand that you as a person are different from the work you make. They don’t get that your work has nothing to do with you as a person and isn’t a proper representation of your values or what you think of yourself. For example, Street Players is one of the darkest things I’ve ever written, Absolute Anhedonia has some very vile passages, and so does almost all my other work in some way. That’s just how my brain tends to work artistically speaking. Of course, there are certain exceptions and overlap in my work and my personal life that I include for my own personal amusement, like my consistent references to Farrah Fawcett in almost every project I do (because I think she was a total babe and it makes me laugh). But for the most part, my work is separate from who I am. That being said, it would make no sense for me to promote this to people widely and beat them over the head with something I know is very likely to disappoint them. I have experienced this same phenomenon with certain girls interested in me many times and can see the pattern clearly: at first they think I’m just a silly, funny, fun guy to be around, and as they get to know me they realize there are darker aspects of my persona and write me off as a person entirely. I know that if I were to promote my work, it would most likely have the same effect as girls getting disappointed in me: people who want to read my work should do so of their own accord, and girls that want to enter my life should be 100% down or not at all. I don’t want to ruin anyone’s day or life, lol.
There is another main reason why I do not like to promote. Aside from the artistic distinction clarified above, there also seems to be the strange feeling I’ve noticed among the promotional artist types, that they do not care who checks out their work, as long as they get the attention they are looking for. To them, it could honestly be anyone, as long as they have an audience. I alluded to this idea earlier briefly when I mentioned that they are people with no souls making things for others with no souls, and that’s exactly what I’d like to re-iterate here: with artistic promotion, there comes all kinds of attention. You could easily be attracting the wrong kind for yourself. Now, I’m not saying I’d like to have full control over who enjoys my work, because that is clearly impossible. Not only is it impossible to control who has access to your work, it is also out of your control how someone will interpret it and if you will get John Lennon’d later or whatever unluckiness that may come your way as a result of a large fanbase with various mental illnesses. What I am saying though, is that it’s far preferable to let the work speak for itself, and let the people who need to find it naturally. This is illogical if you look at it under the lens of capitalism, I do not argue that at all, but I believe it is more interesting in the long run. The work will reach the people it needs to rather than the people you tell to check out your work; more often than not, advertising is not always a good idea because people will just resent being told to do something.
Of course, when I do not promote I still attract various types of strange, mentally unwell people. In the past I have had people reach out to me on IG or via e-mail, and because I was a poor judge at first, I did not realize these folks were looking for some kind of social outlet rather than just enjoying my work. I guess they somehow expected more from me, be it a drinking buddy or whatever else. Unfortunately, there’ve been cases where I also got contacted by abusive people and folks that seemed to want to harm me. That was no fun either, and attention you get online can be both a pleasant or awful experience. But anyway, my reason for bringing all this up was to make the point that, even with my “organic reach” idea, it is not without its faults and you still do attract potentially crazy people. However, it is still much preferable than advertising yourself and bending over for the masses, so to speak. With organic reach, there is a certain amount of weeding out that happens, and you do not have to be prepared for too many people coming after you. The only challenge sometimes is realizing early on who is, in fact, a crazy person and who means well. I allow people to contact me in case it happens to be a good looking woman I might be interested in starting a relationship with, or someone with money to waste. So that means I just have to be ready for a certain level of crazy people to contact me, which is not too difficult, and in the end organic reach has more pros than cons.
To sum everything up: real Gs move in silence like lasagna, promo is generally a bad sign, and organic reach is better.