Dharma Bum

OC Art Blog Relaunch Reception & Art Show

So for those that don't know I'm responsible for another blog that gets much more traffic then this site. I started the OC Art Blog back in 2004 when I had my little gallery as a way of promoting the art space and the OC art scene. Over the past several years it had gained quite a following but then I went to grad school and it lost a bit of its MoJo. Well over the last several months I decided to get the blog back to its former glory. Luckily for me I have found several local writers/artists to help make it happen. This Saturday we are having a little relaunch party and art show that will feature the work of our writers Suzanne Walsh, Sarah Walsh and Joy Shannon (pics in order). Please come out support your local art scene and say hello. Details Below:

 

OC ART BLOG RE-LAUNCH PARTY AT THE SANTA ANA ART WALK SATURDAY APRIL 7TH

Location: The Backroom at Memphis at the Santora

7pm-10pm

The OCArtBlog is hosting a re-launch party for it’s website in the back room of Memphis at the Santora on Saturday April 7th from 7-10PM during the Santa Ana Art Walk. The OC Art Blog is dedicated to the Orange County art community and has re-launched with a new format, new features and new writers. Enjoy drinks, appetizers, art by Suzanne Walsh, Sarah Walsh, and Joy Shannon all while learning more about the new OC Art Blog.

The OC Art Blog was started in 2004 to build community and promote the marginalized but dynamic Orange County art scene and features artist profiles, exhibits, events/openings and music reviews. The OC Art Blog is committed to increasing awareness of the at scene in Orange County by supporting artists, galleries, museums, curators, professors, and anyone contributing to the art scene.

Come socialize with other artists and discuss your ideas, interests and art with the OC Art Blog writers and help increase the influence and impact of the blog to better promote, support and serve the arts in Orange County

For more information contact Chris Hoff: narrativechris(@)gmail.com 714-767-5861 or visit www.ocartblog.com

The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you.
— David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

I think I hold on to this for my writing...

“The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who’ll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you. If you’re sitting around trying to dream up a great art idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and somthing else that you reject will push you in another direction. Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that’s almost never the case.”

-Chuck Close

How To Doubt Your Writing

This post on the Disquiet Blog really captured my attention so I thought I would share with any current or prospective bloggers that might read this here blog. I needed to read it as well. How To Doubt Your Writing..

1. Assume that the best blogs need to be written in the Grad Student Voice because you follow a lot of grad students on Twitter and quite a number of them follow you, and so you to try to write like they write their blogs, because other grad students like it, and retweet those blogs, and;
2. Assume that retweets mean something, and assign GRAVE IMPORT to those retweets, and become convinced that they not only create meaning about your worthiness as a writer but also assume that retweets are an indication of your worthiness AS A HUMAN BEING AND IF YOU HAVEN’T BEEN RETWEETED YOU’RE JUST A FUCKING FAILURE, OH JUST GIVE UP ON LIFE ALREADY and then realising, in essence, sometimes retweets, i.e. attention, is like bird shit, sometimes you get splattered, and most days you don’t, really, because;
3. Quite a bit hangs on spheres of influence, networks, and who knows you, who really knows you, and whether or not they’re influential in the blogosphere and the Twittersphere, and how;
4. One day, if they decide to like what you write and say, “THIS IS AWESOME”, then all the people who are their friends and who want to be their friends or who are merely influenced by their tastes or opinions will also retweet what you wrote and say, “THIS IS THE BEST THING EVER, I LOVE HER BLOG”;
5. And promptly forget about you or your blog the next time you link to a post or to something you wrote;
6. Which you, being silly and foolish, will see as a sign of your failure as a writer or a blogger, and perhaps it is a sign of your failure of a blogger, if being a blogger means garnering page views and “hits”;
7. After which you try to repeat your style, your writing, whatever it is that brought about that first bout of attention, and slowly realising:
8. The influential grad students of Twitter have probably stopped paying attention to your blog, and they’ve stopped talking to you anyhow, and you’ve stopped talking to them, and the previous compliments and attention had really nothing to do with what you wrote, it just had something to do with you being there at the right moment, i.e. it’s all about whether the BIRD HAD TO SHIT AT THAT PARTICULAR MOMENT;
9. And you realise that you’ve wasted a lot of time on really stupid self doubt and you’ve been a fool for not actually using your blog the way you promised yourself a year or so ago when you started it – to test out ideas, to write bullshit, to think through things, to write, to write in any way that comes to you without being hemmed in by the “right style” or the “right form”, and realising that maybe, just maybe, the grad-student style was never your thing because;
10. You’re not a fucking grad student, and;
11. You remind yourself that the things you write should not be contingent on retweets and attention, or maybe-
12. In the digital economy and online spaces where you publish, retweets, links, and attention are exactly the factors that make or break a writer, except with the volume of writing that is online these days, you either get noticed or you don’t, and then you remember the people who have noticed you and who have taken the time to consistently remind you, even through emails and private DMs, that they read what you write, and that you tend to forget about them thinking about the people who don’t pay attention to you;
13. And there is really no particular explanation or reason as to what makes people consider you good one day and meh the next, but then you realise this isn’t true, that there are perhaps complex factors about your “audience” and where you live and where they live, and that the politics of space, race, gender, sexuality, and class will also have a role to play online, both in the type of attention you get and don’t get, and the type of attention and validation you seek, and then realise you’re beginning to have a headache;
14. Because does it, and if so, how?
15. And you entertain the idea that far from erasing boundaries and limitations and constraints, Twitter really does reinforce “the power of place” and that maybe, politics aside, because you don’t know how to deal with the politics of digital attention at the moment, but you can deal with your Individual Feelings, so you deal with your feelings and decide that this is what they meant when they said be fearless and fail in your writing, when they said that if it mattered to you, you really should not care who else cares or who else does not care, and maybe this lack of attention allows you to fail spectacularly, in front of an audience, an audience that is present and aware but does not really care either way whether you write or you don’t, an audience that does not really pay attention to you unless you say something at the right moment, when circumstances are right, when people see what you say and feel moved enough to want to read what you wrote, which is essentially Twitter in a nutshell;
16. And you learn to show up and write, regardless of who’s paying attention to your fucking tweets, grad students or no, and you suddenly think of Rilke, who will be shocked, and then embarrassed, at this woman who is sitting here writing, nay BLOGGING, about retweets and page views, a woman who will then comfort herself by imagining him repeat these words: “I beg you to stop doing that sort of thing. You are looking outside, and that is what you should most avoid right now.”*
17. (And to ignore the little voice that won’t shut up, that wants to ask Rilke how to ignore the outside when the outside seeps into the inside, and the inside exists in the outside?)

"If a writer is so cautious that he never writes anything that cannot be criticized, he will never write anything that can be read. If you want to help other people you have got to make up your mind to write things that some men will condemn."
- Thomas Merton

The Postmodern Executive - Getting Out From Under Perfection

After a little hiatus that took place for no other reason then getting distracted, I have a new post up at the OC Metro. I really appreciate the opportunity to bring narrative ideas to the larger public, especially the local business/entrepreneurial community. So please take a look and if you like what you read please share it with a friend.

Orange County is a center of high achievement, entrepreneurial accomplishment, and all the trappings that come with material success. So it should come as no surprise that a piece of my practice includes working with clients who are struggling with the problem of perfection, and the bad effects it brings into lives...Read More Here.

Tonight a woman asked me if I was a writer. I told her, Yes. It didn't feel like a lie.

Word

Learn to write by doing it. Read widely and wisely. Increase your word power. Find your own individual voice though practicing constantly. Go through the world with your eyes and ears open and learn to express that experience in words.

— P.D. James