An interview with American music legend Jonathan Richman – all in handwriting
My advice to people has always been: copy old shit. For instance, the style of Every Frame a Painting is NOT original at all. I am blatantly ripping off two sources: the editing style of F for Fake, and the critical work of David Bordwell/Kristin Thompson, who wrote the introductory text on filmmaking called Film Art. I’ve run into quite a few video essays that are trying to be “like Every Frame a Painting” and I always tell people, please don’t do that because I’m ripping of someone else. You should go to the source. When any art form or medium becomes primarily about people imitating the dominant form, we get stifling art. If you look at all of the great filmmakers, they’re all ripping someone off but it was someone 50 years ago. It rejuvenated the field to be reminded of the history of our medium.
Film music is an embrace of rampant unoriginality, and to think about how film music works, we need to think of new ways to talk about these questions, rather than just saying, “it’s a copy”.
Don’t live in the present. Live in the deep past, with the language of the Koran or the Mabinogion or Mother Goose or Dickens or Dickinson or Baldwin or whatever speaks to you deeply. Literature is not high school and it’s not actually necessary to know what everyone around you is wearing, in terms of style, and being influenced by people who are being published in this very moment is going to make you look just like them, which is probably not a good long-term goal for being yourself or making a meaningful contribution. At any point in history there is a great tide of writers of similar tone, they wash in, they wash out, the strange starfish stay behind, and the conches. Check out the bestseller list for April 1935 or August 1978 if you don’t believe me. Originality is partly a matter of having your own influences: read evolutionary biology textbooks or the Old Testament, find your metaphors where no one’s looking…
Rebecca Solnit, How to Be a Writer
“I just make things I like bigger.”
Love this response to a letter to the editor that Corita Kent wrote:
“I don’t think of it as art — I just make things I like bigger, assuming that some other people might too.”
Filed under: Corita Kent
John Cleese:“Steal Anything You Think Is Really Good”
From Open Culture:
You’ve heard you need to find your own voice, but it’s difficult to know what that is when you’re just beginning. You have too little experience to know what works for you and what doesn’t. So? “Steal,” as the great John Cleese advises above, “or borrow or, as the artists would say, ‘be influenced by’ anything that you think is really good and really funny and appeals to you. If you study that and try to reproduce it in some way, then it’ll have your own stamp on it. But you have a chance of getting off the ground with something like that.”
Cleese goes on to sensibly explain why it’s nearly impossible to start with something completely new and original; it’s like “trying to fly a plane without any lessons.” We all learn the rudiments of everything we know by imitating others at first…
Cleese says something similar in his memoir, So, Anyway…
Steal. Steal an idea that you know is good, and try to reproduce it in a setting that you know and understand. It will become sufficiently different from the original because youare writing it, and by basing it on something good, you will be learning some of the rules of good writing as you go along. Great artists may merely be “influenced by” other artists, but comics “steal” and then conceal their loot.
Filed under: steal like an artist
Never hesitate to imitate another writer. Imitation is part of the
creative process for anyone learning an art or a craft. (…) Find the
best writers in the fields that interest you and read their work out
loud. Get their voice and their taste into your ear—their attitude
toward language. Don’t worry that by imitating them you’ll lose your
own voice and your own identity. Soon enough you will shed those skins and become who you are supposed to become.
William Zinsser, “On Writing Well”
Copying is a way to help people find their voice — you try out a bunch of different ones until you discover your own.
J. Otto Seibold, Mr. Lunch Takes A Plane Ride
I got this from the library for my son Owen. We both love it. It came out way back in 1995, and it was the first children’s book illustrated using a computer:
Working at Clorox was my first exposure to using computers for art…Before I did any illustrating I did a lot of engineering and drafting in the places I worked. Clorox was switching over to computerized drafting techniques and I got into it. They bought really early 1980 painting programs. You couldn’t even get the paintings off the computer. I would stay really late at work and play with this machine. I got into using it later for art because I was interested in the Apple Macintosh which was born here in the Bay Area.
Here he talks about the influences behind the book (emphasis mine):
I am a big fan of the illustrator John Hersey. He did a bunch of work I liked and I thought I would copy him. (No plagiaristic sad feelings between us, we’re cool.) When you see art and it is something that excites you, it’s hard not to want to try it out. And copying is a way to help people find their voice - you try out a bunch of different ones until you discover your own.
Another big influence when I created the Mr. Lunch series 20 years ago, was the symbols and language of cartoons. If, for example, somebody is looking at something, I draw a dotted line from their eyeball to what they are looking at. Or if someone is surprised their hat flies off, or If someone draws a poop you put some wiggly lines above it to show it smells. Because they were done on the computer I tried to make it look like they were old fashioned, on coated paper, and made by a machine. I am influenced by everyone and everything.
Also, I was a huge fan of the “This is (London, Paris, New York, etc.)” series by Sasek. When I was into him, his books had not been reissued so I found old copies of them at flea markets. There are homages to his work within my work. I really admire him and my work is a tribute to him.
The Contemporary Jewish Museum just finished up a J. Otto Seibold and Mr. Lunch show (some pics from the exhibit here):
[The exhibit] offers visitors of all ages the opportunity to understand Seibold’s artistic process through the display of images in various states of completion. It includes eighteen color prints of original illustrations from the three Mr. Lunch titles, as well as a sampling of original pen drawings including storyboards, early versions of illustrations, and designs for covers. A wall-sized enlargement of the preliminary digital skeleton of one of Seibold’s drawings sheds light on the vector design process. The exhibition also includes dummy books, various pieces of Mr. Lunch ephemera including designs for a Mr. Lunch skateboard, and objects selected by the artist that served as inspiration for his stories and designs.
The book itself is out-of-print:
These books are no longer in print so there are no copies of the book to buy. Currently, I’m on an Amazon.com rescue mission where I’m buying all the cheap versions of my books and making a special silk screen print in each one and reselling them as Rescued from Amazon. It’s like a dog adoption concept except I call it SPCB (Society of Prevention of Cruelty to Books). In the literary world there is a lot of anti-Amazon sentiment and I thought it would be funny to “rescue" my books from Amazon. It’s a way for me to freshen them up, add some new art, inject humor into it and make a statement by getting them back.
You can buy a copy signed by Otto or you can get one used but unsigned on Amazon.
Filed under: my reading year 2015
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