5.5.2024

But what is all this pretentious shit about “immortality?”

Why does this concept matter to you, and – more specifically – why is this a valuable lens for looking at the act of creation through? Is it?

“Great is the enemy of good,” it is said, and there’s definitely something to this. There are likely a hundred thousand Great American Novels that have never actually been started. Worrying too much about the longevity of a piece (or a whole category, like video games) of art is the opposite of sparking the desire to create something new. It invites the creator to obsess and worry over something being good enough to last rather than encouraging them (Me! You!) to roll up our sleeves and just do something, create something, make something.

And, it is true too that many of the acts of creation we revere were never thought of much during the creator’s life. Emily Dickenson, Vincent Van Gough, and so on. Worrying about someone – anyone – liking what you’re trying to create is a dangerous game. Bertrand Russel goes so far as to even tell you that if you’re writing or creating something to try to impress or appeal to someone else then you’re doing it for the wrong reason.

Of course, this level of “follow your dreams” talk sounds a little bit like the advice of someone who inherited an Earldom rather than having to work for a living. Recently I believe Professor Galloway called out this kind of Steve Jobs advice as being the kind of guidance that only the wealthy can give out to the young; and it does sound a bit out of touch. Creation with a capital-C, and any concept of immortality resulting from the acts of creating seems far-fetched, dreamy and naive in a time of constant tech layoffs.

So how to think about creation as a profession or even just a job?

Let’s fall back on my experience:

I said before that I’ve met very few game makers who do it for the money. And this is true to a point, but it is also true that creating software, or books, or music, can be a successful commercial venture. Indeed, there are billions of dollars that go into creating consumer industries around building and marketing each of these kinds of “Art.”

“Is commercial art really Art?” sounds like the kind of question I can imagine art school undergraduates in the sixties asking one another. There’s an inherent yawn in the question; like if you can even be in a room where someone is asking it you already were raised with some kind of silver spoon. And, worse, there’s something in this line of inquiry that inherently feels like people who aren’t successful commercially, or worry they won’t be, trying to hide behind the fig leaf of some higher calling. “Oh, my work is too deep or edgy for people to get it; I’m an artiste, not some crass cog in the capitalist machine.”

I think this is an adolescent, seductive rabbit trail to get lost in. There’s nothing wrong with creating things that people like. Mass market success IS success, though it is not the only thing that matters. In our culture (in most every culture I’m aware of ever), people expressing excitement about what you’ve made, through patronage, through album sales, though in-game micro-transactions IS a very validating way of knowing that you’re doing something – creating something – that people value. “Your dollars are votes.” This is how many people express appreciation in our culture.

So let’s agree that there is nothing about being popular, commercially successful, or even pursuing commercial success that invalidates the act of creation.

And worrying too much about how popular or successful – how immortal – a thing might be can pour cold water on the act of creation.

Which takes us to the next question.

Can facilitating or managing creative work be an act of creation?