How the Art is Made
We Have So Many Mistakes to Make
Mark Rushton’s Interpolation in the Arts is a weekly email on Substack where I talk about my ongoing work as a recording artist and visual artist.
This email is brought to you by the Mark Rushton Gallery, for printed and original artworks. License my music, sound fx, and illustrations at Pond 5 for your creative project. I’m on Bandcamp and all the usual streaming services.
This week’s topics:
Someday This Pain Will Be Useful
Lowering Expectations
Horsegirl - “Julie”
Someday This Pain Will Be Useful
On Monday, St Patrick’s Day, I got my hair cut. My barber, Stephanie, is in the Hotel Kirkwood, and does a great job. A while back, she managed to find a cut that hides my cowlick. I guess at my age I should be thankful I have a cowlick.
In the Des Moines Skywalk, just before I arrive to the barber shop, there is a series of sayings on the wall. I always look forward to seeing them. Yeah, maybe someday this pain will be useful.
I spent most of the past week with administrative things on the music side. Everybody wanted a new W9. One company was trying to send me royalties via PayPal and was having trouble, but it’s likely something on their end.
Most of my time was spent cleaning up the studio space. Rearranging. Some eBay, which I hate using, but I need to get rid of things. I did scratch out a little noise on the lap steel, and I inked the above photo. I feel adrift, but it’s probably the next artistic thing waiting to show up.
Lowering Expectations
I do a lot of promotional things on the music side. Part of a process. If I listed them all here, you would be bored to death. It’s a grind. It should be a grind.
I’ll look at certain data and reports, but I don’t obsess on it. I don’t even chart it out, although I keep an eye on it. You can’t get hung up on second guessing why certain things go well or they fade. If it happens, it happens.
For me, the art world has always been a huge disappointment. Artists of all kinds who deal with similar things should recognize this and pivot accordingly. Instead, most artists bitch constantly in their hive. Everything is unfair. Or they waste time worrying about stupid shit, like politics.
This past week, I asked Grokpilot if anybody in Congress did anything with music. I had to ask it a number of different ways because it seemed like zero since Senator Orrin Hatch retired and died. (The Orrin Hatch rabbit hole is something else. Hard to believe that a Mormon Republican co-wrote a Hanukkah song that was later covered by a hip-hop artist, but he did...) All I could find was some backbencher who once played a guitar at a political rally, and another who played in a band called The Second Amendments.
So, yeah, not much out there. That’s why I say artists shouldn’t care about politics. Because politicians don’t have any interest in the arts, other than laundering money to this or that, and expecting a kickback. I don’t consider that “funding the arts”. The government is good at starting wars and causing problems, and that’s about it.
After all the crap I’ve seen in my years, I think artists should have extremely low expectations about everything.
When I was in high school, I wanted to join the Art Club, but the teacher wouldn’t let me in because I was finishing up being a junior and he wanted “younger people” in the club. So there you go, age discrimination.
When I applied to be the evening manager of the school district radio station, I didn’t get interviewed even though I had been referred by the guy who was leaving the job. They picked another fella who, I’m not mistaken, was related to a school board member. In other words, nepotism.
When I was briefly the head of the college radio station, I got harassed by an administrator who tried to steal the station’s FCC license - something I couldn’t have given him anyway. So he locked me out and installed some puppets. That guy was eventually fired for lying to the parents of a female sexual assault victim. So yeah, total corruption.
When I decided to drop out of art school, I already had a part-time job working with computers in the evening at the nearby mutual fund company. Because I was exceptionally good at the work, they wanted me to go full-time and made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. At the time same, one of the female professors I had was an obvious misandrist who didn’t want any men in the club, so it was an easy call on my part. Yep, that was definitely gender discrimination.
Then there’s all the incompetence I’ve seen over the years. Too much to list.
What are you going to do about it? You just have to move on and adjust.
I know “the arts” doesn’t want me, but I still want to be an artist.
Horsegirl - “Julie”
I think the new Horsegirl album, “Phonetics On and On”, is a modern-day classic.
I don’t say that lightly.
Listening to it some more, this week, it seems like the kind of record I’ll be going back to over the next 10 or 20 or 30 years, and still enjoying. It has a timeless feel.
Listen to “Julie” - (the video is excellent, but listen… wear good headphones - Cate LeBon’s production is masterful…)
On Thursday, I happened upon a video called “Julie” (Behind the Song), and this is fun to hear the band talk about their creative process. They start talking (and painting) after 25 seconds of the song.
How can you not love this band?