The unsatisfiable ambition of a lifelong artistic practice

Or, the reason I'm compelled to keep making art at 40 even though I am not rich or famous or <checks notes> a youth.

What are we doing here?

I may be insufferable, but I can’t get myself out of any meeting without asking that question out loud at least 2.76 times.

~*~*~ What is, for the love of all that’s holy, zee pointe? ~*~*~

I can understand why that might get me locked out of certain rooms.

It also explains why I’ve locked myself out of certain rooms.

Rooms filled with commercial agents who might catapult my career, and schmoozy pay-to-play mixers where I could brand myself as “likable” to gatekeepers who enjoy that sort of thing, and institutions which would align me with All the Smart People Who Have Smart Things to Say Out Loud and Are Very Important to The Discourse.

Let me be clear, I want to be catapulted and likable and smart.

Those things sound GREAT! I just can’t quite get myself to play the game that would get me into the room¹ because I always, always, always get my craw stuck on the question:

What are we doing, and why are we doing it?

This is how I small talk.

All evidence aside, I’m not an intolerable jerk with a chip on my shoulder.²

It turns out my main issue is simply philosophical. My main issue is that I believe in the concept of ART AS BASIC RESEARCH. And it’s a hill on which I choose to dramatically perish.

Let’s roll back the tape a smidge and define these two kinds of research: Basic and Applied. Promise you there’ll be a point!

BASIC RESEARCH is “a systematic study directed toward greater knowledge or understanding of the fundamental aspects of phenomena and of observable facts without specific applications towards processes or products in mind.”

In other words, it’s the research of broad concepts like WATER.

Basic research asks things like “why water be like that?”

APPLIED RESEARCH is “a form of systematic inquiry involving the practical integration and application of accumulated theory, knowledge and technology toward a targeted purpose.”

In other words, it’s the research of how to apply broad concepts like WATER to actually create something tangible, like AQUEDUCTS, DAMS, or SEWER SYSTEMS.

Applied research asks things like, “what if water did this?”

Understanding the basics of a thing helps us understand how to use it.

If I didn’t lose you at ~AQUEDUCTS~, I’m impressed. Here’s the point I’m getting to…

I feel you should know I spelled aqueducts correctly on my first try. I’m very proud of myself for this. Photo: Cayetano Delgado

My Artistic Practice Has No Definitive Point at Which I’ll Be Satisfied

Maybe it was watching The Martian,

maybe it was the deliriousness from getting my son back to sleep in the dead of night,

maybe it was that half a gummy,

but I realized the reason I keep asking this annoying question³ about fundamental, first principle, underlying laws and, thus, don’t get invited into many rooms is because

I see my art as Basic Research.

I’m playing a long game.

My art researches the basics. I’m asking why water be like that.

I want my art to contribute to a larger, more elegant understanding of the human condition. To be clear, I have nothing to teach. Nothing to “show you” as the audience. No special prescription that serves as a way out of this pickle.

What I have are a lot of questions I’m willing to ask out loud.

I have the instinct to gather up the pieces of life as I’m experiencing them.

My body of work is a body of research. It’s an infinite attempt at coming to terms with life’s basics.

Now this list is a good time.

I want my art to assist the future.

If Basic Research gives us the building blocks for breakthroughs in cancer research and space exploration and urban planning,

then it stands to reason it can also give us the building blocks for breakthroughs in culture, human understanding, beauty, and life’s richness.

My voice contributes to a longer, broader conversation. One that compounds over time as the basics about love, despair, ambition, humor, grief, and the whole philosophical gamut get considered.

If all goes as planned, I’ll be contributing to a future breakthrough that I probably won’t be alive to see.

What kind of breakthrough? It’s none of my business. I’m here to research the fundamentals.

My artistic practice is compulsively cumbersome with no shortcuts.

Practicing art as Basic Research is long and cumbersome, and I won’t ever know if I achieve any breakthroughs with it.

But achieving a breakthrough isn’t the goal.

The goal is to continue contributing my Art-Research with quality and volume. There’s no shortcut for that.

I can’t AI my way out of it. Because it’s precisely the time and difficulty that gives Basic Research its merit.

The cumbersome nature of dealing with life using my own brain, my own emotional color palette, my own history, my own hopes, my own hangups, my own projections, my own understanding of the quiet part no one’s saying out loud — these are the things that give art its teeth.

It’s the entire trick.

My life path so far.

The extraordinary ambition of Basic Research

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve texted my best friend asking her if I’m a hack or if I’m out of my mind or if I’m delusional.

And yet, even amidst the flurry of my tragically-average ennui, I’m still compelled by some kind of ambition to keep at it.

This isn’t reasonable ambition either.

This is an ambition towards the far away future. I am compelled by a place and time I can never go, but I’m drawn to it and drawn out by it. I want the work I’m doing to reach all the way there.

I believe this kind of ambition will never be satisfied.

Even if I premiered at Sundance and had Apple and Netflix in a bidding war and was then able to make whatever films and series and shows I wanted because I was the indie darling of the moment, and then eventually went full EGOT,

I wouldn’t be sitting pretty. I wouldn’t feel content! The motor of my artistic practice wouldn’t stop compelling me forward.

Those things barely register when I consider what actually compels me to add another five pages to my screenplay each night.

Because I’m trying to do something here.

In the same way a kid looks up at the sky in amazement, straining their neck to see how the stars span without end toward a distance they know is there but could never really understand, this is how I make art.

Both here and beyond here, compel me. I’m ambitious about both of them.

I want to participate in all of it. Not because I want my name on a building, but because I really do believe in my artistic practice as Basic Research.

I believe the Universal Underlying Principles are found in art, and I’m desperate to know them.

Sometimes my artistic practice feels like a channel to the collective unconscious. Sometimes it feels like I’m a toddler staring at myself in the mirror.

For me, working within the Basic Research of a creative practice is a black hole. I’m constantly swallowed by it and pulled toward its dense center.

Making art feels like being pulled to the Point of No Return.

The future, the present, the unknowns, the basics compel me to keep showing up. Some days, I don’t even have a choice.

The force is just that great.

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Tell me in the comments: Does this resonate with you or am I off my rocker? Perhaps, both/and?

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Speaking of black holes, if you feel like you’re being absorbed into the dense center of god-knows-what and can’t quite figure out your place in space and time…

TAKE THIS QUIZ! » YOUR ARTISTIC TIMELINE

It’s free and fun and I’m desperate for you to tell me which part of the timeline you’re on.

1. This is not noble by the way. I don’t feel “above” the room. I merely feel room-adjacent. As if I don’t have all the component parts that would make me room-acceptable. I have some qualities the room likes, but they’re fully offset by my other qualities which become kind of room-hostile if you stare at them too long. Like: the sun is great, but staring into it is a recipe for cataracts.

By the way, gotta acknowledge — I could also mask myself to enter the room. And in fact, I did that in the earliest part of my career for about seven years. I pretended to be something I wasn’t so I could waltz into the room, aiming for beloved-status. But I quickly found I did not have the chops to keep up the charade. And it never paid off.

2. Or at least, that’s not the only thing I am.

3. “Why?“