A Slow Selling Out?

” ‘Selling out’ refers to the compromising of one’s integrity, morality and principles in exchange for money, ‘success’ (however defined) or other personal gain. It is commonly associated with attempts to increase mass appeal or acceptability to mainstream society. A person who does this, as opposed to continuing along his or her original path, is labelled a sell out and typically regarded with disgust and immediate loss of respect.” –Wikipedia

Must one possess work quality in order to diminish it in order to sell out? Many people would call Tom Clancy a sell out when he sold the rites of his name to the company Ubisoft. I would have to disagree.

This past week I wrote a little article with intent to make money for a website on how to catch a lady’s attention. While the article’s general content is “honest” the premise is far from artistic–and yet I’d like to write more for this website.

Five months ago, I started My Inconvenient Body. The blog contains first draft essays–the equivalent of public journal entries. It is not art. My motivation behind the blog is multifold and composed of pure personal gain:

A) I wanted to find an audience for my writer’s voice–and the immediate gratification the blog provided suited me at the time.

B) I wanted to do something creative with my transition from single gal to married with child.

C) I wanted to ease my fear that having a child would kill my existence as an artist.

D) I wanted to possibly progress my slow-going writing career.

On one hand I take the blog very seriously, on another, I do not.

This famous painting by Arnold Boecklin comes in several versions. When a rich widow saw the original "Island of the Dead" she offered to pay him to paint another, adding she and her husband's coffin as passangers on the boat. He complied for a great sum of money. Now this "compromised" and money-motivated painting hangs in the Modern Museam of Art.

Ten months ago I decided to proceed with my pregnancy despite my principles and beliefs that motherhood would compromise my artist’s journey. I decided to have my baby for many reasons, one of them being that I wanted the best of all worlds. When faced with the reality of pregnancy, I changed my mind and determined that I could go on very well with both identities (mother and artist)–one inspiring the other, even.

Even now, I am not sure if the preceding is a charting of my slow decent into a sell-out’s existence–and for the past week, especially, I have been pacing back and forth, unsure of how to assess myself and my current compass points.

And yet:  the fact that I’ve wasted so much energy nail-biting this theoretical, subjective issue pisses me off.  Is it even possible to sell out before you’ve made it?

My fear of other’s disapproval leaves me to stress about my blog’s verbal scrapbooking and these harmless articles posted elsewhere. Do these lesser grand projects demerit me as a “serious artist”?

But what is a “serious artist” after all?  I’m not quite sure if I know anymore.

In 1965, when asked what might tempt him to sell out, Bob Dylan joked, "ladies undergarmets". In 2004--If you hadn't caught the commercials, I'm sure you can catch them on youtube.

I’ve been trying to give up all those “I am’s” and “She is’s” the world tries to throw at you–including title’s generated by my own insecure ego.  In reality, I am my actions and not how I choose to define myself–as a dear friend once told me–Definitions are obscene.

Lately, I’ve been feeling like a character straight out of Dostoevsky, with a swagger in my stroll and a crack in my heart–where everything’s meaningless, absurd absurd–so let’s make it everyday, how we want it to be. It is in this existential fog, that I wonder what the point is of upholding a set of stubborn artistic morals if I’ve already (long ago) concluded all morals are relative?  If everything is relative, and context is everything, then with every new context, there are new rules, new standards of behavior, new measures of good, bad, right, wrong, etc. etc.

And round and round we go.

I’m “paying my dues” –I’m not selling out.

I’m letting go of my “serious artist” ego, in order to readdress my child-like interest in creativity, in taking risks, in ENJOYING the art process.

In the meantime, I’d like to forge a career writing so that I can buy myself more time to actually write.

If only we were all equipped with such a black and white gauge for truth and honesty.

My friend writes in an email, “The thing is…if you can be really honest in your work, then you don’t, won’t have to run from yourself.” –and she’s right. Perhaps all my internal pacing is about my gentle lieing, my softening of truths. I have not been all that honest here at My Inconvenient Body–or rather, I have not been as honest as I can be.

As to not offend, i’ve used euphomism and avoided topics.  I’ve witheld opinions that may deviate from what the mainstream would find agreeable. As to not misguide, I’ve ended posts on high notes when those notes wanted so badly to fall flat.

(i.e. I don’t have it as together as I pretend in “You Can’t Talk Women Issues Without Talking Weight“.  I don’t want to be the adult that I applaud in “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Adult“.  I wasn’t feeling as cheerful about time as I pretended in “Time is Money? O Yes!“. And I’ve written nothing about the difficulty I’ve had with the married life, at all.)

So here, let’s clear the air.  While My Inconvenient Body is not necessarily art, it will be truthful–and then I will be able to own it.  Which brings up the difficulty of truth–because true honesty always tends to spin me round in circles.

I believe integrity is dead, and yet I find it terribly beautiful and yearn for it despite myself.

I write for myself and yet desire the audience’s presence and feedback.

I love life–lust for it, even–and yet I often dream about falling out of mine in order to have the complete solitude and time to write only (how easy things would be, then!)

I often entertain grandiose ideas about myself and yet suffer the most horrible bouts of insecurity and depression.

The Musica Universalis is an ancient idea and to some romantics, very real.

I am ever frustrated with words and how limited language is, and yet I choose them as my primary means of artistic expression.

My fiction often tells more truths than my essays.

You see–it is difficult to tell the truth, nay, nearly impossible.  Perhaps this is why I often fall back on academic blather or tongue in cheek pictures.

When I was young, they told me I would have to pay my dues as a writer–and I think that as long as I do my best, as long as I am honest, I don’t have to consider myself a premature sell out.

Maybe it is lazy or childish of me to display my writing when it is not at it’s best (here at Inconvenient Body and elsewhere on the internet) but thus far, my blog has really helped me get up and pick up my pen.  It’s helped me feel good about difficult decisions.  It’s helped me not feel alone, while at my house all day–alone.  It’s helped motivate me to get the “real work” done, and that’s the main thing–

–and yet, I’m not so sure I can separate the “real work” out from the “not real work” any more.  It’s all me trying.  Sometimes the words hit that perfect arcing chord and resonate, resonate with those universal songs with which all artists try to dance–and sometimes I fall flat.

Regardless, I remain–writing those words down.

I think that’s what they call perseverance.