Art Goblin
Or, how to become undeniable
There’s a scene in La La Land that I think about a lot. Sebastian (played by Ryan Gosling) sits down at his piano with a cup of coffee and reaches over to put on a record of the song “Japanese Folk Song” by Thelonious Monk. He plays a few of the first notes as he listens, takes the needle off the record, practices the measures a few times, before taking a sip of coffee and putting the record on again. This time, he nails the section of the piece as he listens, and the scene transitions to the next. It’s only about thirty seconds in the whole movie, but it sticks in my mind — a beat where the jazz-obsessed Sebastian shows, for a moment, the nature of his practice that makes him a quality jazz pianist. He’s shown to be a talented performer with a zeal for the music, but in this moment we see behind the scenes where the talent came from, what built up to get him there.
There’s a beauty to a movie version of the artistic obsession, and there’s the prosaic reality of it as well. I found myself wondering what it would look like for someone like me (a tech worker in San Francisco) to commit myself fully to my art form. Could I possibly have any sort of models living a similar life to take inspiration from?
I let my focus wander for a bit, until I heard a familiar bassline resonating through my walls. Turns out I forgot to consider my roommate and brother down the hall. Neil has been producing music for over ten years at this point, with a level of obsession that I’ve never even come close to paralleling.
I’ve seen the many iterations of his music since he started and have seen his immense growth through his work as AIR APPARENT and beyond. Each successive song is better than the last, each set of lyrics more interesting, each production decision a bit different from before. He’s working on music constantly: working in his home studio in between quarters during NFL games we’re watching on TV, writing lyrics on airplanes when we’re going on vacation, listening to demos in Uber rides, analyzing podcasts about the creative process on walks, and everything in between.
In contrast, my creative practice has been lackadaisical. Sometimes I’m more moth than man, mistaking each and every new distraction for the moon. At times, I’d thought about focusing more on my creative process, but I’d often found it difficult to make it seem very urgent or achievable.
I’ve been blessed to take part in a session this month at an online poetry school called In Surreal Life run by Shira Erlichman. So far, this has consisted of poetry prompts, community, and artist talks from some of the most accomplished poets in the country. I signed up mainly because I knew that one of the artist talks would be with Kaveh Akbar, one of my favorite poets, and the one who made me want to start writing poetry in the first place.
A million things stood out during Kaveh’s artist talk, but some pieces stick to the inside of my skull like chewing gum to the bottom of a school desk. “Progress as a poet is maddeningly linear,” he said, “You have to spend 10 years thinking that this is the thing that I am and this is all that I’m going to think about all the time. I’ll be thinking about everything in the world through the lens of the stuff that I’m working on and be a little art goblin.” Being an art goblin was straightforward: reading poetry voraciously, following the trails of who influenced who, studying deeply to understand what poetry was good and what wasn’t and what the difference was, how you could learn from either case, metabolizing all of the words and experiences you hear and see into work.
And beyond that, Kaveh talked about the difference between becoming a good poet, someone capable of creating a poet that moved people to murmurs of approval and expressions of enjoyment, and becoming an undeniable poet worth paying attention to. To become undeniable was to push each poem further than what you thought was good, something that required “a level of psycho-spiritual maturation.”
And for once in my life, after often feeling so un-ambitious about many things and trying to focus on doing things for the sake of myself, flint struck tinder within my chest, and sparks began to fly. I wanted to be an art goblin, I wanted to be a great writer, I wanted to shoot for undeniable.
What made this moment different from others? It’s not like any of this information felt brand new. Perhaps I somehow thought that every poet I loved and admired sprang out fully-formed as dexterous weavers of words out of nothing, or that each one received a special secret dose of Shakespeare’s Secret Stuff in MFA programs to accelerate their understanding of rhythm and meter and vocabulary and melody. Perhaps I hoped that making truly undeniable work was reserved for a sacred few chosen by lightning bolts and rays of light so I could resign myself to an existence where I didn’t have to try so hard to be something more than what I was. One where I could feel comfortable simply being a worker in the larger machine.
Still, for someone described as “the laziest person I’ve ever met” by multiple people, I’m not the first person you’d expect to be driven by the promise of more work. I’ve abandoned many pursuits in the past out of pure avoidance of additional effort expenditure, even in other creative media (photography, illustration, to name a few).
But this is different, “this is the thing that I am.” I already feel like a little art goblin, ever since I’ve started focusing on consuming more and more art, being more attuned to writing than before. I’m constantly turning words over in my head and finding ones that stick and ones that don’t. Beautiful ones and dumb ones bounce around my head constantly, and I wonder if any of them may lead to inspiration. And some of them do, and I write poems that I like and newsletters that I sometimes like. I’ve already begun this journey; it’s just a matter of continuing.
What’s more is that there’s value in the work, and the work isn’t fast. Ten years to dedicate to anything is insane, but I’ve dedicated six and a half to writing weekly already, and I haven’t even started studying yet. I’ve dedicated six and a half years to writing words weekly, and I keep falling more and more deeply in love with words. I’ve found tremendous growth through my writing, altering my worldview and giving me greater vocabulary to engage with the world and see it as I imagine it was intended to be seen. As I see more and read more and write more, it’s as if the sun goes from just being a yellow circle to being a dripping ball of honey across the pink lemonade skies in the evening. The words add color, my emotions have shape, the world is bigger and more flavorful.
I want to do this work because I’ve been doing this work in small parts and it’s made my life better. Everything makes more sense this way — the bad days and emotional depths can be described and turned into beauty, the brightest moments are diamonds polished more than ever before. I don’t know what psycho-spiritual maturation means, but that’s what this feels like.
And as I go down this path, I hold my hand out to you as I continue this journey. I wonder how you’ve seen me grow, I wonder how much more you’ll see me grow, and I hope that all I do can help me write things that will delight you, nourish you.
[...]
I can no longer remember
the being afraid, only that it came to an end.
“Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One Before” by Kaveh Akbar
💧 Drops of the Week 💧
PLAYLIST - b&w - playlist reflecting some of the things I’ve been listening to lately
POEM - “Helen of Troy Calls Her Sister” by Maria Zoccola - you remember the hydrangeas, / how they looked so bright inside the storm?
happy i stumbled here :)
you are an art goblin