Getting Religion for Fun and Profit

I’ve been trying to promote my newsletter lately, and I’m not alone. I’ve bought tea from Beautiful Taiwan Tea Co. for years, and recently noticed that they’ve added the same obnoxious pop-up windows to their website as I did. I hate it. It feels like I’m having to shout at people to beg them to subscribe instead of allowing them to browse my website at their own pace. It reminds me of when I ran an antique shop. I never liked to bother people, but I learned that most people want to be spoken to or even directed. The big social media corporations understand that too.

The Challenge of Engagement

It’s become particularly obvious to me after setting up a new Facebook business page after a few years on hiatus. I’d tried to use my personal account to share my work as a “creator,” but it seemed to confuse people who expected me to accept their friend requests. Several amusingly redacted and resent their requests multiple times. I felt rude, but I also enjoyed the absurdity. Now I’m the recipient of rudeness. My paid advertisements get lots of likes and love reactions. Some will even comment, “beautiful painting,” “great job,” etc. Facebook artists are like buskers on the sidewalk. The vast majority will simply pass by, maybe speak an encouraging word, but they won’t linger.

So, artists are encouraged to create “content.” That usually involves sexually suggestive material, comedy, or both because those things stimulate the basal ganglia or the adrenals, the proverbial “dopamine hit.” That keeps us scrolling, keeps us reacting thoughtlessly, and more importantly, keeps us shopping for new things to maintain the appearance of American success.

The Absurdity of Performance

There’s a fellow from Asheville, NC, a classically trained cellist. He makes videos of himself wearing silly costumes and acting like a literal buffoon. I thought it was hilarious a few years ago, before the pandemic. He’s still doing it, and I guess there are enough new discoveries to keep the act fresh. But to me, we’ve passed post-absurdity. It’s sad to see cellists having to play the kazoo and classical pianists having to wear low-cut dresses while playing Boomer Rock cover songs. There are guzheng and hammered dulcimer players, the sort of people who used to perform at fairs and sell CDs, now playing nothing but pop music covers and video game scores.

This is how things are now. We’re all becoming more reactive. I find myself wanting to joke around, post satire on Facebook, complain about Facebook...on Facebook. And it’s all feeding the same monster. In my previous blog posts, I’ve written about the idea of stereotyping and categorizing. It’s what algorithms do and what we do as communities. The more we become a global community, the stronger those forces become.

The Fear of Being Different

In the same way that no one wants to be the first...or eighth...person to follow a random artist on social media, none of us want to be the outlier in our personal conduct. We’re progressing a bit as a society, but acceptable behavior is still limited to wearing a quirky t-shirt. It’s fun to be off-beat and silly, but if you go too far, there will still be a record scratch and crickets chirping. That’s how it is with art too.

I spent a few days on a 4’ tall allegorical painting. The first time I posted it on Instagram, it got zero views after an hour. I posted a still photograph instead of my usual reels, and it featured a stylized woman’s thigh. It was certainly not obscene, but it may have been odd enough to trigger some sort of moderation. There were a few polite comments expressing support, but I quickly realized I wasn’t being understood. I think that’s how it was for serious artists in the past, and they just pressed on anyway.

The Struggle for Authenticity

Honestly, I had misgivings about the work to begin with. It was on a poorly primed rough canvas, and I should have spent more time making it appear finished. But I knew from the onset that it wouldn’t be a marketable image. That wasn’t the point. Nonetheless, this is a business for me, and I can’t afford to sacrifice too much time for no return, so I rushed things. I say rushed, but it was an excruciating and tedious affair. I have to concentrate much more on such images than my usual kitsch.

I’m not sure if this is factually true, and I’m not going to bother asking GPT, but I’ve heard that when the song “Louie, Louie” came out, it was banned as obscene. Not because it was, but simply because the lyrics were so inscrutable that they were presumed to be. That’s how I suspect my image was perceived by the moderation algorithm. A lot of artists, myself included, use LLMs like GPT and Gemini to critique our paintings, but the thing is there’s no pretext for innovation.

The Limitations of Technology

AI models can’t understand innovation; they are by their nature reiterative machines. They can only parrot what they’re trained on. If someone pushed the avant-garde, it will not be understood, by man or machine. The revolution will not be televised. It takes something almost divine to innovate in the arts. It takes confidence, not only in the narcissistic sense but in the religious sense. It takes faith in a higher power, maybe. For me, I tried for years to paint an image of Christ Jesus, but I couldn’t. I’m not very religious, and I was trying to paint a religious scene for material ends.

For me, I very much believe this. That there is a sort of current, prana, chi, mojo, woo woo, or what have you. If you’re not tuned into that, the body will remain rigid. There will always be some trepidation remaining as long as you’re painting with an external object in mind. My last large expressionist painting wasn’t bad, but it was painted that way. I was still trying to argue, to persuade, to explain. I wasn’t letting go and letting God, or whatever. As Robert Plant sang in "Achilles Last Stand," “I know the way, know the way, know the way, know the way.”

Lessons Learned

I learned a lot from my last painting. I accomplished what I intended as far as making a sacrifice of expensive paint and painting directly. I wanted to not plan anything, and I succeeded in a way. There were symbols beyond my conscious intentions. I managed to keep the sincere energy towards it, at least for the most part. I was hindered by the materials, by time, and by a fairly conventional sleep schedule. But I came close, so I know what to do differently next time. I don’t allow myself time to just practice, and that’s what these otherwise expensive misadventures are best considered.

I painted over the canvas and haven’t decided whether to post a photo of the image here yet. If I do, I’ll share it in my newsletter, so subscribe...I beg you.