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| http://wiki.waveborn.com/becoming-so-good-they-can-t-ignore-you |
Competitive media companies tend to be bitchy hot-spots for gossip, as employees fight it out among themselves for the most coveted positions within a house according to their appropriate levels, or not, as the case may be. You think some of the books you read are freaky? You should meet some of the people who make them....shudder. Bookish types tend to be somewhat anti-social: think of a mad scientist who just HAS TO clean every beaker in the the lab twice or thrice to guard against invisible alien...er, germs, and you're there.
Many well-read people are simply addicts with a bent for technical and highly repetitive labor clothed in sheep's garb, but take away their main "jones", and they're like any other addict; snarling nasty vicious beasts. I love reading as much as the next professional publisher, but take it away from me and I know I won't freak out, miss it as I may, because I'm in such a phase right now when it's more important for me to produce work through writing than being your passive audience.
It's the same thing for most well-trained artists who go through different phases of productivity based on many factors that include time, money, inclination, location; same as any other field, with the exception that there is no one to pass the buck to, which makes for much more difficult productive periods than the average "joe", but such is life. Because we create content long before the public has access to it, our companies (and lives) are filled with intrigue and possibility which, in the wrong hands, makes for a potent cocktail that people not born to the work can't handle.
I see bound galleys at garage sales all the time, but it's one of the most unethical acts a publishing professional can do, because leaking a book early to the public deprives everyone in the work queue the right to earn off it as a property, the way that buying bootleg DVD's is serious intellectual theft, but catch any drunk at the bar on Friday night, and you've got a thief looking to score, hot to brag about his "already seen it" status to other junkies who use it as leverage, too. Why not just wait? I always liked waiting to see something, like being pleasantly surprised on Christmas morning, not that I need to have the element of mystery to enjoy anything. I'm happy with "spoilers" that deprive media junkies of their high, because I'm a mature adult who understands that there's tons of available content for just about any person out there in the world, and as such, I accept that I probably won't be able to get to all of it, so why try? Just relax, and enjoy it.
But, some people need dirty nasty secrets to hold over one another as bribes, just like assholes in a typical office do. We all know them: they're that shifty-eyed kid who sneaks onto your email behind your back, so he can develop some "strategy" to foil your genius without you knowing it, even though he (and every other person on the payroll) is utterly dependent on you for income, thus breeding the hatred that envy inspires. I dated a typical ad guru who knew all the tricks of the trade: hire brilliant but vulnerable people like, say, a single woman living paycheck-to-paycheck in the city, just one small check away from bankruptcy but famous anyway, even though you should, like, NEVER say it to her face or she'll, like, know it and stuff, and there goes secrecy as a strategy!
So, I know all the big personality types who peddle our wares, grudgingly as "no-talents" tend to be as a group, but also utterly dependent on us, and isn't that why they turn on us? It's a pretty easy formula to suss out, much like the reason the retarded bully in the playground hates everyone: simply because you're there, and because his father's a mean drunk, so they're set up to be that way. Anyway, during our brief time dating (most of which the ad guy spent in competition with the other man I was dating), he asked me a lot of leading questions about the "other man" disguised as "support" from the modern guy looking to "score" with a beautiful woman. After a quick while, it actually became a pseudo-gay relationship between the two of them through me. He also thought it was bitchy fun to "out" a well-known and highly respected actor to me, simply because I knew his work well and the women he's collaborated with creatively, like, say an infamous Broadway actress with very curly hair (thanks for not selling out "soul sister") who can pass for my doppelganger at times.
I was nonplussed because lots of people are gay, to which he became a little twitchy about it, "Oh, oh sorry...did you have a 'crush' on him?" Uh, no...never really thought about it before. "Because if you did, I'm so sorry!" Yeah, no sweat, dude. Actually, we were in downtown Brooklyn on a warm day, and I was thinking about pizza at a "famous" place that's always crowded with tourists, and as a native New Yorker, I never fucking wait on lines for our food, like some gimmicky tourist trap meant to gouge the unsuspecting. I cook better than most people anyway! He seemed curiously let-down that I couldn't give a fuck about some artist's sex life, and why would I? What does it have to do with me? It's the same thing at work: why would I give a fuck about who sleeps with who, and when? I make the work, they sell it and give me the profits I earn through my own labor. It's a pretty effective formula for craftspeople that's worked since we thought of it many moons ago.
It did give me a lot insight into why people like him sell-out so quickly; it's the fear that the money will dry up, once we figure out who they really are, which isn't true for experts like myself. Like my mentors told me, do your job well and that's your security. You don't need all the bullshit. If you work hard, you'll succeed, and that's always been the case with me, because nothing beats hard work. Anyway, after he and I necessarily drifted apart because he couldn't figure out how to work with an open honest person like myself, I noticed that he drifted out west, after his ex-wife moved there with his one child, the same woman he loved/hated by alternately craving her sex and then cheating on her to get her attention, like a ten year-old in crafts class off of his Ritalin. Really? Skirt-cashing the very woman he despises? Oy....strange are the ways of the disordered classes.
Anyway, I'm counting on him cyber-stalking me today without telling me how much he loves my work (and that happens every day, too), so let me take this time to ease his mind: back in the day, we "the knowing public" also knew that Liberace was gay, as we did about Richard Chamberlain, George Michael, and the fabulously feminine Boy George, and you know what? We love their music and their art anyway, because as Steve Martin once famously said, all you have to do to be a master artist is work harder than anyone you know, and "be so good that they can't ignore you". Ain't that the truth? There...now it's out there. The truth is out there! See you on the flip side of life, kids, and all the other "minors" in my audience. I see you!
