at the intersection of art, magic, and lotteries

I read Stephen Elliott’s Daily Rumpus e-mail today and a tuning fork exploded in my heart like a pyrotechnic out of Michael Bay movie. It was like Jerry Bruckheimer had just burst out of my chest, alien-like, having epiphanically converted to making art instead of money.

Especially exploding-tuning-fork-like for me were passages like this:

“(John Mayer) was talking about spending more time on your art and less time on your updates. He said, Don't worry about promotion, trust your creation to speak for itself.”

…and this:

“We were talking about the intersection of commerce and art. No one knows where it is. There's no choice except to focus on making the best art you can, the rest is mysticism, a distraction.”

This is something that I’ve talked about here before (click on the art tag in the subject cloud way down to your right if you don’t remember), but I always love seeing someone else talk about it, especially someone important and everything, and especially when they say it better than I could.

No, wait, that part just annoys me. And makes me want to be better. But in an annoying, exploding-tuning-fork kind of way. Good on ya, Mr. Elliott.

P.S. If you don’t subscribe to Mr. Elliot’s Daily Rumpus mails, what the hell are you waiting for? There’s often sex  and sex trade talk, and I get that some may not appreciate everything he has to say, but there’s so much gold in them thar hills too. It’s worth any work you may or may not have to do finding it.