Monday, November 17, 2014 11:12 AM
I’m hopeless. I just don’t get it. My last post to my blog was what I considered to be a fairly funny take on the phenomenon of ‘Holiday Movies’. I’ve re-read it a few times now and I’m pretty sure it’s amusing and entertaining. But no one else seems to agree. Maybe no one actually looked at it—am I wrong simply to expect someone to read a few pages worth of commentary by someone they know? Maybe they didn’t think it was funny—am I too amused by myself? What is the nature of the bubble I live in—and how completely different is the public consciousness I am so helpless to reach?
I wrote a book of illustrated poetry—I’m no Robert Frost, I’m not even Rod McKuen (nor would I want to be) but it’s readable and the pictures I drew have some small charm, from where I’m sitting—no one cared. As far as I can tell, no one read the thing—from all evidence it appears no one even started to read it and got bored. It was simply ignored. I was disappointed.
To date I’ve posted over 1,500 YouTube videos of myself playing the piano—after five years I have 63 subscribers. I’m hardly ‘blowing up’. To be honest, I’m not very good—but there are occasional flashes of entertainment value. Perhaps I shouldn’t even confuse the issue of my selling myself online with my piano-playing. When I write or draw, I know when I’m good and when I’m failing to reach the mark—when I play piano, it’s all a crap shoot.
Most of my blog postings take the form of essays. I’ll be autobiographical once in a while, even posting on some rare days what could be called ‘journal entries’, but mostly I try to assume the role of social critic, or political commentator. I know that stuff is dry and lacking the punch of say, fiction—but I do try to keep it amusing and straightforward, i.e. easy to read. Perhaps it’s my vocabulary that puts people off—a life-long bookworm like me acquires quite the word-count.
The most frustrating aspect of my online transparency is my certain belief that my stuff would have killed, fifty years ago—that, in spite of my creativity, my creations are from an out-of-date template that no longer interests the present public. The other truly difficult aspect of not ‘catching on’ is my total ignorance about the ways in which modern, online content producers get and keep their audience. I’m left to wonder if, given the right approach, my work might have a huge following. Third, and last, I worry if I ever got a huge following, how big a hassle that would be and how miserable my life might become if the world actually did decide to take notice of me.
Should I be proud of how ‘outsider’ my art is—or should I despair that my art is not art as the world sees it? These mysterious difficulties would be a lot easier to handle with the help of a group of like-minded people to discuss it with—but without connecting on the internet, the chances of becoming part of a creative group are very low—catch-22.