Creativity

Light The Ugliness On Fire To Warm Ourselves

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

The latest news about our oncoming future of AI generated soulless media has got me and my creative friends talking. We’re swearing, too, but the conversation is quite intelligent between the occasional profanities

My good friend Serdar notes in an excellent post that you have to drive out ugliness with beauty. If you keep showing off the ugliness, the awfulness of things, it creates pathologies, a tunnel of crap, even if its in mockery. Trauma tourism of our culture is still traumatic after all, and we hunger for actual good stuff – so make something good damn it to squeeze out the ugly.

I agree with him for the most part, but sometimes you can use the ugly.

Now in my own work, even that which responds to trends (like some worldbuilding books), the goal is to get people to write good things. I want something that adds to the wonderful of the world.

But you’ve also noticed some of my sarcasm or parody here, or in my fiction. It occurs in some of the more experimental art and writing I do (currently) under pen names. There is a part of my work that uses the terrible and sad things of the world as fuel, and I think that is valid – when done right.

There is value in mockery, and parody, and response. From Mark Twain to Dave Barry, Terry Pratchet to Chuang-Tzu, people have made works both timeless and calling out people and organizations and ideas that need to be skewered. Sometimes you create beauty by giving the ugliness a good drubbing- hell, no small amount of Punk music fits this category.

The problem is this is really hard to do. If you’re going to make beauty from ugliness, then you best make sure you’re up to the task and you want to do it. Not everyone is, and that’s fine – for instance Serdar and I have different backgrounds and inclinations. Or in short, I’m the sarcastic and parodic one, meaning our friendship is sort of a Road movie that happens very slow.

As the sarcastic one, here’s what I think makes a response-to-ugliness work as actual, positive, creative work.

First, it has to timeless in its own ways. There’s little value in speaking to the event of the moment without context or depth. The more the thing you’ve decided to “take on” is connected to the big picture, the better. I recall an essay in the Chuang-Tzu on warriors (albeit one clearly written by one of his followers) that had me outright laughing at the end, even though the tale was perhaps two thousand years old.

Secondly, a work of mockery or parody has to be relevant, and this is the paradox that affects many a writer. You have to know the subject matter enough to make what you create more than just saying “see how dumb that is!” I mean I can watch many videos mocking an unwisely-constructed electric truck that seems designed to kill people. But in-depth understanding is valuable because then I understand.

Third, such work has to be human. Ridiculing something or someone is easy, any bully can do it. I want to understand people, their reactions, their experiences. Ever read a good essay or book on the economic impacts of some horrible government choice on real people and felt it? That’s what you want. That’s what art does – it gets the mind and heart going.

Finally, it has to be actually good. You can’t rely on someone else being terrible to carry your work. I learned this lesson from podcasts and youtube videos that did critiques. The truly good ones have good hosts, providing smart analysis, and were people I’d listen to or watch if they spoke about good things.

If you create beauty out of ugliness, you need depth to really do something that will squeeze out the ugliness. For all he took on, the late Sir Terry Pratchett’s books are things of beauty, even when addressing issues from racism to economics. Any ugliness is but fuel for beauty – in the right hands.

If you can’t do that or don’t want to, then fine! We all do our parts to make the world a more beautiful place – and that’s needed today more than ever.

Steven Savage

The Cybertruck Tells Us What We Want

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

Yes, I’m going to blog on Elon Musk’s Cybertruck and how it teaches us what people want. Buckle up, but avoid a crash because the doors will probably stick.

Now if you expect me to praise Elon Musk or the Cybertruck, then you’re new here. The Cybertruck is an ugly mess, a renegade PS1 asset turned into an overdesigned and overhyped dysfunctional chunk of metal. Even if Elon Musk hadn’t worked hard the last few years to ruin his reputation, the Cybertruck would be a joke (and indeed it didn’t help his image). There’s a reason it’s so hated – and ironically the reason the Cybertruck is so hated is a lesson in what people actually want.

See, the Cybertruck, for all its flaws, is the realization of a vision.

It is a bad vision. It’s got an ugly retro-futuristic design with no appeal. Its control system sounds horribly inconvenient. The design makes visibility questionable, to the point I’m nervous to drive near one.. Even the unintentional flaws like the rusting or the dangerous hood, are things that seemed to be ignored in pursuit of the vision. That vision, apparently, is being a prop from a 1980s direct-to-video film.

But it is clearly a vision made by a person, there is an idea here.

Even if people had not, soured on Musk, the Cybertruck would still be the fulfillment of a vision. This truck is designed by someone with a plan, it is an expression of a human voice and human intent. Therefore because we know there is a person behind it, the dislike becomes personal, passionate. We get why it is the way it is and we don’t like it.

To hate something truly, is to have a personal connection to that hate. There’s someone and some decision to understand and dislike.

The hatred for the Cybertruck also tells us why we like things. A vision that speaks to us, that tells us about the intent and the creator and what it means, is one we can love. Through a book, a movie, or a vehicle, we can feel the intent, the human agency behind it. The love of something is also personal, because we know there is a person there and we get it.

Why we hate the Cybertruck is why we can love things – the human factor.

This is also why we really hate everything soulless, personality-less, from AI to corporate bureaucracy. There’s no one there, no one home, no moral actor. Even in hating something, knowing there’s someone there to hate is enlivening, dare I say, human. The Cybertruck may be awful, but it’s awful in a human way.

So before you entirely write off the Cybertruck, take it as a lesson. Not in hubris or questionable design decisions (since we’ve already had that lesson), but in why we hate and love things. It is a personal statement, and humans gravitate to those.

Even if just to complain.

Steven Savage

Punching A Hole Through My Head Into Myself

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

Punching A Hole Through My Head Into Myself

A few of my regular readers know I have side projects under various pen names. We creative types all know the need to be ourselves by being someone else for various financial, marketing, or personal reasons. Sometimes those other selves teach us lessons.

It may surprise some of my readers that I’ve started doing art under one of my pen names. Not book cover art which everyone knows, or my abortive attempts at learning to draw by hand. I’ve gotten into digital art and fusion, with legacies such as midcentury modern (naturally), branding, punk, surrealism, and more. Some of it might find it’s way here, of course, but now it thrives in a more private space.

As I started doing art, I noticed my themes were deep, often disturbing, often profound, and always weird. Very honestly, had you shown this stuff to me a few years ago I wouldn’t have guessed it came from me. Now it came out with the gesture of a mouse and the click of a button, thoughts on religion and humanity that had an edge you rarely see in my writing.

This art also felt right, felt proper, felt real.I was expressing something within me. Yet when I grasped for the words to say what I was expressing, it was difficult. I didn’t know how to easily describe what was coming out in my digital art experiments.

Then I realized that visual art gave me a way to express ideas and parts of myself that my writing did not. I had an entire different language to express a side of me previously left to feelings, to vague allusions, and over-or-under descriptions. What once took careful and oft failed engineering of words came out in black and white, in filters and shapes.

I had taken up experimenting with art and given part of me a new language to reach peope. I also was far more aware of sides of myself, of feelings, of opinions, now that I had a new way to express them. I knew myself better.

This is why I think it is critical for people to learn an art of any kind – writing, music, drawing, something. Learn to express, learn to create, learn to let yourself out. There are things we need to give voice to in order to both reach people and reach ourselves.

It is also important that we creatives, no matter our chosen method, keep experimenting and broadening. A writer should try art, an artist should try music, a musician writing, and so on. We are always finding out more about ourselves, and each artistic method is a new way for the real us to come out. You don’t have to be professional or even be good, but you should explore, have fun, and see what happens.

Where’s my art going to go? I have no idea and that’s not the point. I’m going to see what happens – and I’m going to get to know who is watching this happen much better. In time, we might get to know them better together.

Steven Savage