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February 1, 2013

The “Middle Shit”, The Bane Of My Life

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The car­toon above got me thinking…

The artist’s job is made up of two main ele­ments: Making and Selling i.e. the inter­nal and the exter­nal part of the business.

Even if a lot of artists don’t much care for the “selling” part, most of the sane ones agree that it’s neces­sary… which is why they have agents, mana­gers, gallery repre­sen­ta­tion, PR firms on retai­ner etc etc.

Now, for sake of argu­ment, assume the inter­nal stuff is the “X” in the car­toon, and the exter­nal stuff is “Z”.

That lea­ves “Y”…  the stuff in the middle, the stuff that is neither the art itself, nor the sales.

“Net­wor­king”, or whatever.

Of course, social media falls in the neither-nor “Y” cate­gory as well… you’re not actually making pro­duct, nor are you clo­sing sales. But you are trying to move things for­ward, kinda-sorta.

You’re doing the “Indi­rect” thing. Kinda tal­king about the work, drop­ping the occa­sio­nal breadc­rumb here and there for poten­tial fish to nib­ble at, sprea­ding the word on new deve­lop­ments and seeing what the inte­rest is, if any.

I don’t know about you, but of all the three ele­ments above, I find “Y” is the most dan­ge­rous. You can spend hours in that zone, Twee­ting, Ins­ta­gram­ming, Face­boo­king,  self-promoting away, thin­king that you’re get­ting something done. And the more you do it, the more addic­tive it gets, the big­ger time suck it becomes.

The good news is, it’s nor­mal. Every busi­ness, small or large, has issues with it.

But at least you know that now…

 

Tags: Hugh's Cartoons