Guide to making lonely art
A downloadable introduction
10 Things YOU Need To Know About How I Make Art
One
You are standing across from a person you have never spoken to before, you’re trying to introduce yourself - actually - well, you have introduced yourself in a saying hi type way but now you’re trying to make an impression. You’re naturally quite shy so you aren’t the best at it, you think it comes across as cute or endearing, you really really hope this is the case.
Two
You are in the city you grew up in, you and a group of friends have pooled together some money and someone's coupon to buy a shit tonne of Hungry Jacks and you have carried it over to a local park and are sitting in a circle eating together. You are not the me that I am right now. You don’t know what is to come, but you can gaze up at the sky and describe how it looks. I can’t, which is devastating to me but doesn’t really matter. Do you like me? Do you feel as though I am about to waste your time?
Three
You and I are sitting on your bed about to watch a show on your laptop, we are excited but we keep getting ads, just ad after ad all telling us to go somewhere else. As though the show is covered in medical leeches, or that it just buried itself somewhere, hid away. You and I look at each other, we don’t know what to make of it. We shut your laptop and go eat.
Four
Back to the person you were trying to explain yourself to. Your words feel desperate, you’re trying to keep it out of your voice but you’re so bad at this. It feels so obvious, how you laugh a little too hard at their jokes, how you dressed to meet them. You hope they will see something in you, something you aren’t trying to tell them. You try to tell them everything you can, try to lead them right to you like they are picking over a crime scene.
Five
There are tutorials on how to develop your art style on youtube. They are unnecessary, style is a result of existing as a person in a context. You cannot avoid having one because you are ultimately relaying what you have seen and what has impacted you and what you find easy to or difficult to approach into the things you make. You could not meaningfully copy another piece of art if you tried, you would just tell people some really intimate things about yourself, perfectly illustrating how another work impacted you, how your politics differ from its creator, how you think about art, how desperate you are. Maybe you should try it then.
Six
You are in your room lying awake after a nap, some time during it had gone from evening to night and your room is dark - through the parts where your curtain doesn’t quite reach the borders of your window a soft line shines. You can hear cars outside. You can think which is rare because usually you are somewhere else in your head. The sky crosses your mind, you open your curtain and look at the street until you grow worried people might be made nervous by you staring at them. You close the curtains and try to watch that show but you get distracted by another website. Have I wasted your time?
Seven
You, for the record, cannot even copy yourself, you can’t approach the same concept the same way twice, because you’ll be a different person by then. So make art about the same things, even in the same way. It does not matter and the you who made the first thing no longer exists if you were planning on asking them for permission, or forgiveness. I’m sorry, I cannot fix this problem you have given me, I can only hold it a little more gently than you did.
Eight
I want my voice to be in the things I make more. I want people to hear my accent, I want people to hear how much I struggle articulating things. You are not meant to read what I say with confidence. I am whispering to you. I am mouthing words because my voice didn’t come fast enough to grant me volume.
Nine and Ten
I made this rly quickly because I cant get this stuff out of my head, i dont know if it actually counts as a manifesto so here are some things that actually might.
- I want my voice in more of my games, not a metaphorical voice, how I speak. I will NOT be imagined American
- Pick an emotion and use everything you’ve got to make the player feel it along side you
- It is very easy to make art with meaning, people will hunt for meaning in everything, so you are allowed to just vibe if you want
- Try not to fixate on making something that looks very polished, there is a point where it will just be self-consciousness, try not to spend all your energy scrubbing the you from what you make
- you will make art you dislike before you make art you like, so just make stuff
- bad art kinda rules
- what you need to get, when you play my games, is that i want fucking everything from you, I cant add a bullet point here that's pro or against this because i don't know how i feel about it
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“The sky crosses your mind,” like a bird
beautiful. I am a decomposing leaf composing a leaf I’ll never see. I love this. I love future-me. I can’t help myself, but I can do one thing for future-me, and maybe that’ll add up to be me and enough and okay.
⚠️💖🛌🏻
This is a v hopeful thing to write under this, so thanks for writing it!
Thanks for connecting. I’m in a scary place tonight. I made a mistake, a connection too deep, with someone a few weeks back. The bad things in anothers life, the death of the one who raised them, domestically debilitating ex, workplace disaster trauma, the encounter, and the hotel room a free doors down. We cannot afford each other. The bad things finding me echoes too strongly the paths another took through me. And they hurt. And the hurt s deeper than the meaning. I know I need to leave. I’ve never felt fear if it’s this. I know I need to leave.
I talked it out with some people I say good night to when I checked your message. I met them taking down a dead limb from a sycamore, scared to hit the person’s car other limbs of the tree is under.
I grab a second branch of the limb this person I just walked up to is tugging or walking down. When the branch is it’s farthest. I ask them to walk towards me. I ask if theyve ever done a maypole ceremony. The limb falls on the word ceremony. They offer me some of the wood. I think of the sight of the person I’ve met’s firepit, covered with expellants of their trailer with pop-out slide. I decline.
I take two hits. A won’t take it from me until it seems I cough, as I do and they do. I talk out how I got here. Between two oceans. Trying to get to Eugene to start school again. Staying because I met someone. Who could use my ear. And then my words. My hand, my presence, my thoughts, my mind, my being, my next to them, respectfully.
It all became who could please what’s made by being between us. And bring the other over making middles meaning. I’m scared. I need to leave. I want to leave this right enough to hurt than it misses.
Thank you again for seeing
7 is where I used to crash on every kind of art.
The me that finished a piece is not the me that started it. And the two have severe artistic differences.
I've learned to remind the second to be a little kinder than his earlier incarnations were, and that has made a huge difference.
the -hyphened notes at the end in particular stick with me a lot, especially
- I want my voice in more of my games, not a metaphorical voice, how I speak. I will NOT be imagined American
- you will make art you dislike before you make art you like, so just make stuff
- bad art kinda rules
thanks!! and yeah they’re things i think about a lot
I love all of this. I love seven most of all, but I love all of this.
thank you! it means a lot
"bad art kinda rules" hell yeah it does
>:)
ive said this in the comments of fog and sea lol but i really do love your writing style. it's very evocative and visual and enjoyable to read!
thinking about this idea of the "you" when you're creating something and the "you" after you're done being someone else, perhaps because the act of creating itself is a learning, growth process even though sometimes it doesnt feel like it....
i love the list at the end lol especially the last point but you already knew that bc im pretty sure i said it already on discord lmfao!!! i also like the bit about how people will always be looking for meaning, even if you dont intend for it... which is so fun!
for what its worth i think your voice comes through a lot in your work! and i cant wait for its amplification as you keep making art... it's exciting!
and no, you didn't waste my time at all
thank you!! im glad you like my writing style i struggle to think of myself as a writer and kinda often assume its holding back my other skills so ur kinda giving me more confidence with it.
also ty for what you said abt the other points in the manifesto its interesting seeing how they get interpreted. ppl looking for meaning in ur stuff is fun
" I cannot fix this problem you have given me, I can only hold it a little more gently than you did."
well said. I greatly appreciate the earnest openness here
Thank you! Particularly on this it means a lot
there's great value in being open about feeling desperate and inarticulate and going for it anyway. it's inspiring, as someone who sometimes can't imagine not feeling that way.
I'd like to echo Cecile's compliments on the evocative nature of your style. it's rare that I find use of the second person more engaging than third or first; this manifesto is one of those exceptions. reading the first paragraph gave me a jolt: "me? how did you know??" I continued to get goosebumps as I went further, even knowing this was obviously written from your own experiences. so I think you succeeded in communicating the feelings described here
I was also intrigued and touched by the video element. it would be very cool if you did manage to put your literal voice in your future stories!
aaah thanks again, im glad the feeling i was going for got across, and ty for what u said abt my style!!
also with being open about being desperate being valuable, i think like while i was posting this i felt a little bad about it not rly being a manifesto in a looking forward sense but like idk trying to walk through how i felt now. but looking back on it after it being posted for a couple days i am starting to be ok with it because i think trying to pinpoint these feelings has been helpful to me and seems to have resonated with some ppl which is rly neat