So Gene Luen Yang sort of negated the last eight years of my life this morning during his plenary session, "Is Art Selfish." He talked about a friend who stopped painting when his kids were born, because he had mouths to feed and people depending on him for their survival. The friend said something to the effect of, "Making art just seems selfish now." After some discussion about how making art forces us to be selfish in a lot of ways--we need uninterrupted time to create, and time spent making art comes with an opportunity cost--he said this: "Having kids is not a reason to stop making art. It's a reason to start. Because they need stories to help them navigate the world." I'm sure that's not an exact quote, but it's close.
I heard that, and thought to myself, "Hmm... Maybe I've been making excuses for myself. Maybe I should have been working on my art all along." Of course, this probably amuses anyone who knows me, since I never stopped writing or making art. In some ways I did more. But I feel like I always let writing and art take a back seat to the needs of the kids. I found myself wondering whether a woman would have stated the same sentiment as unequivocably as Yang. Because the thing is, it doesn't matter how good and right it is to make art, somebody really does have to make sure the kids don't kill each other. Yang closes his office door, and even locks it. When his kids come and knock, he doesn't always answer. Then they reach their hands under his door.
You know that at some point, they go off and find the other adult capable of making them a peanut butter sandwich, or reading a story, or whatever other thing those needy needy small humans want at that moment.
At the same time, though, he alluded to a point that just blew me away. Yang teaches at a high school--I don't trust my memory, so I'm not going to name the topic, but it was sciencey--he had an opportunity to use one summer to chaperone his students in a tutoring program for children in need. The high-schoolers would spend the days teaching younger kids. It was a good program that would have benefited his students and the needy children they would teach. He chose not to do it because he wanted to use the summer to make his art. At the time, he wondered whether he was being selfish. Then he pointed out that the kids still got tutored.
And that was a flash of insight. Because I was listening to him, thinking, well, of course you should do that. It's more important to help needy children than to make art. I probably would have made that choice--here's a worthy cause, asking me for help. I can do it, and I can do a good job. A bunch of needy kids is more important than whatever art I could make, right? Well, maybe. But there's a subtle problem with the question.
So often, an opportunity or a need will come up, and we think (or I think, anyway) that I have to chose between making the world better or making art. But really the choice is between me being the one to make the world better in that way, or letting someone else make the world better in that way, while I focus on trying to make the world better with my art. When I think of it that way, art doesn't seem quite so selfish after all.
Of course, there are times, especially at home, when I'm the only one who can do the thing that needs to be done. Then it really is more like the first version of the choice, and of course, sometimes art has to get in line behind a scraped knee or a bad dream. But sometimes being "selfish" by doing what we feel we've been called to do involves a lot less ego than deciding to do something out in the world at the expense of our art, just because we forget that we aren't the only qualified do-gooders in the universe.
Other gleanings from Day One:
Because Gene Luen Yang writes graphic novels (he prefers comic books), he often attends cons. One day a group of cosplayers went by, and his friend said to him, "Don't you feel like there's something religious going on here?"
Ron Koertge spoke to a class at Calvin before speaking at the festival. Apparently a student gave him a hard time about his book Coaltown Jesus because he made Jesus a "sinner," in her opinion. His response--maybe he just looked like he was being a sinner, because the kid he was helping so badly needed to be reached, and this was the way to reach him. It amuses me to think about how even fictional Jesus gets accused of being a sinner while doing good. I also like that this happened right before Palm Sunday, when we traditionally remember how much people wanted Jesus to be someone he wasn't.
James McBride (The Color of Water, The Good Lord Bird): (again, this is a paraphrase) "Most of the things I did, I failed. The difference between me and the other guy is when I fail, I just forget about it and move on."
Over and over, I've heard authors today say that when deciding what goes into a book and what doesn't, they bring themselves back to "What is the mission of the book?" So, from almost the beginning, they are thinking, not exactly in terms of a tagline, but in terms of what, specifically, they want the central issue of the book to be.
That's it for Day One. Wish you were here.
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