On Respecting Artists Less

Remember, champions of literature: barely anybody gives a fuck about literature! And that’s okay. Chances are you feel that literature is sacred, so keep reading and writing anyway. But when you’re about to publish writing, though, remember the cardinal rule: barely anybody gives a fuck about literature right now.

This may seem sad, but you’re lucky to be alive today because barely anybody can find other barely anybodies online. But you shouldn’t expect millions, or even thousands, to care about your writing or your favorite books. But, also, you should remember that small stuff is better, anyway. Everything big is necessarily monstrous.

(These are notes to myself that I’ve—obnoxiously—made public.)

The desire to publish, to be publicly admired—like the desire to procreate—is intensely present in most people. It can be ignored, but it’s much harder to disown a cultural preference than to opt into one. Choosing not to publish something or to not have kids is hard, but it can be done. I’m not good at limiting my desire to publish yet. But I’m working on it.

Part of that work is respecting activities that are selfless and temporal, like hospice work. Or risky, like firefighting or activism. It’s remolding my admiration to value the small and selfless more than the large and self-obsessed. To admire more nurses than pop stars. To respect firefighters more than novelists. ER surgeons instead of Kardashians. Local farmers over CEOs.

Sometimes I get messages from people—mostly teenagers—expressing a desire for fame. This breaks me, a little. If there’s one clearcut lesson from Hollywood, it’s that valuing and pursuing fame for fame’s sake will almost always destroy you. Which is why I’m trying to bend that desire for fame into a desire to help other people, to improve or save lives in a real way.

But who am I to talk? Actors, writers, publishers… They’re only entertainers for the majority of their audiences. Only a tiny amount of people are markedly helped by an actor’s performance. Or by a writer’s book. That said, books provide a longer engagement of someone’s mind, so they’re more apt to change it. Even still: it’s a small, nebulous impact.

But a hospice nurse—if he or she is not a psychopath—helps every single person she cares for. A firefighter risks his life to save others. ER surgeons perform under life-or-death pressure. Activists and investigative journalists risk their lives and livelihoods to protect and empower strangers.

This is all a longwinded way of saying that I’m trying to admire artists less. I’m trying to break my fetishization of that lifelong pursuit. The desire for beauty is inevitable, but we might be better served by a desire for altruism and its dignity.