Art Success/Ideas. Mission Impossible? Dream On!

Disinterested, RTomens, 2018

Idle dreams of an artist...

Sat on a step smoking, trying to disentangle one solid idea from a web of them in my head, like so much spray-on Halloween decoration currently festooning pub windows - come on, man, think! An unrecognised tune starts up via the MP3 player, which turns out to be the dub version of Nothing Is Impossible by The Interns - nothing is impossible? Really? Yes, let's be positive! Even I can muster a good idea at 7.30am!

Mission impossible: realise your dreams. But then, once realised, no longer being dreams, are they as attractive? If I'm magically given that apartment in Nice would the once dreamt of life gradually dissolve into an ordinary daily life, albeit one in infinitely preferable weather to that of the UK? Would I become blasé about the Med on my doorstep? The Jean Cocteau museum along the cost? The beaches around the corner? That sounds impossible.

The dream of every artist is to be 'successful'. How is that measured? What's your scale? Is it just a few gallery shows? A few sales? A rich investor? Coverage in Frieze magazine? (I've had that via my fanzine, Ego, thanks to Jon Savage...oh....past glories!). "Recognition!" We cry. "Gimme recognition!". From whom? Your peers, friends, critics, dealers?

The more the notion of 'success' is untangled the less solid it become, like a ball of rubber bands (not wishing to stretch an analogy here) - but 'twang...snap!', that rubber is so old it broke! You had those dreams stored away in the cupboard for years and now realise, perhaps painfully, that they're not only useless but symbolic of failure - oh no!

But let's take a leaf out of The Interns tune - anything can still happen. Perhaps that's a quietly-kept idea of middle-aged artists still doing their thing, unrecognised in the grander meaning of the word. The truth is that success may not bring happiness. You're suddenly expected to keep on doing whatever made you successful. The critics have sharpened their pens in preparation for stabbing them in your delicate heart once you slip. 

I wouldn't know what success entails, not having read anything much on the lives of successful artists, other than biographical snippets regarding the big hitters. The art gods only interest me in as much as some of their work is inspirational, but in truth I put no-one on a pedestal, or try not to. Being honest, reading biographies used to depress me in a way, the way that allows envy to take hold on reading about the cafe society, college life (Black Mountain), collective atmosphere of ages gone by when movements were afoot. You know the kind of thing, where so-and-so was in the right place at the right time with the right people and "Boom!", great things emerged. They also had the talent, of course.

My dreams are vague, making the 'mission' impossible, undefinable...and yet it's very nature allows for anything to happen...in my head. The old cliché, you make your own luck, applies. The amount of work necessary to stand a chance of making things happen is daunting, to me at least; and many others from what I see. I would rather translate Nothing Is Impossible into a viable proposition for the next piece of work. In other words, despite material limitations (cost of materials, storage and work space) in our minds, at least, anything is possible via our imagination. Whatever we dream up for the space available is limitless. Nothing is impossible in that world, at least.

It's a great tune, play it through for the second half dub.