14,984 notes

Stop thinking about art works as objects, and start thinking about them as triggers for experiences. (Roy Ascott’s phrase.) That solves a lot of problems: we don’t have to argue whether photographs are art, or whether performances are art, or whether Carl Andre’s bricks or Andrew Serranos’s piss or Little Richard’s ‘Long Tall Sally’ are art, because we say, ‘Art is something that happens, a process, not a quality, and all sorts of things can make it happen.’ … [W]hat makes a work of art ‘good’ for you is not something that is already ‘inside’ it, but something that happens inside you — so the value of the work lies in the degree to which it can help you have the kind of experience that you call art.

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A writer is a man who has taught his mind to misbehave.

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Never love anyone who treats you like you’re ordinary.

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Learn to accept praise. I know, I know, when someone runs up and says “I love your work!” your inclination is to mumble an apology for wasting their time with your crappy art, or to say “It’s not that great.”

Don’t.

This is not about you.

If somebody says “I love your art,” and you say “My art is awful,” then guess what? You just insulted them. You have told them, in effect, that what they love is crap and that they have poor taste. Clamp your teeth down on that urge, smile, and say “Thank you.” If you can’t think of a single other thing to say, I make you a gift of this phrase—”Thank you. You’re very kind.” Say this when you want to scream that you messed up the knees on the horse and the tail on the fox and the eyeballs on the woman. If you have to say it every single time, then do. You don’t have to believe it, you don’t have to jump on the table and say “That’s right, I’m AWESOME!”—

But don’t insult them.

2,375 notes

Shame is the lie someone told you about yourself.

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Who cares, for that matter, that Marconi merely invented radio transmission when his actual goal was to pick up the voices of the dead?