I think I became a film major because I always wanted to be an artist, and yet, was not born with anything that could be construed as artistic ability. Creativity? Maybe, but not in abundance. I do consider writing to be a form of art, but a lot of people can do that. I mean, click on over to Amazon and see how many books there are, and then consider that I have never actually written a book, and tell me how good an artist I am.
In high school, I took some photography classes, and really enjoyed them despite the fact that my freshmen Photography teacher was a crusty, old woman who instructed me to "take pictures" as my first assignment. And she wasn't being altruistic, I don't think. Just lazy. I distinctly recall also signing up for a Photojournalism class in high school, until it was canceled because I was the only one who would dare do such a thing. Think how my life might have been different if I had teachers who actually fostered creativity instead of, y'know, not giving a shit.
I think I wish I had tried at art more as a kid because the idea of a gallery show has always appealed to me. Not going to one, because I'm not really very smart about things and often feel like an idiot (Also, my inherent need to make sarcastic comments at every moment is hampered by the fact that the artist is probably the one I'm making the comments to). But I think it would be really cool to have something I'd done on display for people to see, or even buy if it was good enough. Usually, screenplays aren't considered fine art in that way. Sure, people buy them, but they generally don't have gallery openings for them. They have those gigantic, cattle-call pitch meetings, but come on, nobody really cares about those. There are enough writers actually working in Hollywood these days. Nobody who is anybody needs to go out actually looking for scripts.
But I imagine selling a piece of art must be a very cool experience. Something that you painted or whatever being good enough that someone wants to put it in their home. Hell, I thought it was cool when eleven people wanted to buy Secret Monkey #1, but that was probably because I had sunk gobs of money into it and wanted to recoup at least a tiny bit of it. And all I did was write a few jokes for that. I didn't consider myself a working artist. Besides, modern technology has changed the standards for creativity too much. I mean, because I ramble on in this blog does that make me a writer? If I doodled something trying to figure out Photoshop, does that make me an artist?
In the end, I'm not terribly disappointed in my life path, even though it would have been interesting to experience having a gallery opening once. Truthfully, I don't think the life of a starving artist would be for me (I'd much rather be a starving Audio-Visual tech.) Also, I think to really call yourself an artist and not be a hypocrite, you have to feel. You have to feel love and desire and pain and passion for your work. You need blood and humanity. You need to have that passion in order to be a real artist, and as I've pointed out many times, I don't feel a whole lot of passion or love or desire for anything. Pain? That I got.
Maybe I would make a decent artist, after all.
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