Cargo

I'm 37.

It got me thinking, well, what if I have only thirteen years left? That isn't much time at all. The old question is, what if you had six months to live, would you suddenly appreciate sunsets and puppies more, love your family, etc. etc. And that's definitely true. But we all have some finite span of years. It's enough time to really evaluate your career and everything you're doing and change course, hopefully to get something concrete done in the time you have left. And for me, I value creative expression the highest.

We live in a youth focused society. If you haven't made it by age 30 or especially by age 40 you're not going to make it, after that it's just a slow slide into the grave. At least that's the subtext. You get one shot to be awesome at something and if you don't then you're a loser. And you'd better be solidly on your way by your mid twenties.

When I turned 25 I started getting concerned about age. I would look up biographies of famous movie directors, musicians, artists, designers and see where they were at age 25, many had directed a few things or produced works of note. Spielberg was already a director by that age, as was Tarantino. I was a nobody putting HTML pages together at the time, with lots of big thoughts but no concrete achievements of note. In the years since I've dabbled in art and music and other stuff that requires a great deal of practice to get good at but never put in the hours necessary to get really good. yet.

And now it's twelve years later. The famous artists, musicians etc that I love were all solidly established by this point in their lives. You'll find the odd poet or author who started late in life but not so much recently, that was back fifty or a hundred years ago when we had more respect for age.

I know it's a stupid thing to be concerned about. I know we're not all going to be rock stars, its the big lie they tell us at the beginning of life, "if you work hard and apply yourself and hold on to your dreams" etc etc. It was a lie I believed and internalized. Because giving it up DOES seem to be the beginning of the long slow slide into the grave.

So fuck that. If I have thirteen years, or one year, might as well go for it anyways.

This piece by Chris Onstad of Achewood, in the character of Ray Smuckles sums up part of how I feel about it. Maybe part of it is Generation X realizing our own mortality.

From here:

On the Sudden Passing of Michael Jackson.
Raymond Q. Smuckles
President, Prime Time Records

It’s bad. It’s bad around here. It’s like today was fake. Even the sunlight seems staged. I wish they’d take it away.

When I got the Celebrity Death Beep on my Blackberry, I blew it off as a dumb rumor. That service is good, but I can see it makin’ mistakes. A false headline at, like, The Onion coulda’ triggered it. Michael had an eye on his health constantly. You know that about him. We all know the lengths he went to for health. Dude slept in a hyperbaric chamber. I like my health, but I ain’t gonna go that far, you know? Michael’s health was, to him, a special, magical thing. Something worth machines.

What I think a lotta folks are feelin’ now is a regret. Not regret that a man died; no. They regret that for almost three decades they been mockin’ this guy. This guy who wrote Thriller, and PYT, and Billie Jean. You know who you are, you Michael deniers, listenin’ to your The Cure or Aerosmith. You always considered Michael’s music silly. Not serious. Lame, mainstream. “Popular.” And his life — everyone gets a kick outta’ watchin’ the mighty fall. It sells paper. It makes us feel falsely superior, from our low places. Yet now, now that he’ll never sing another note, you listen to those songs anew —ABC, I Want You Back, Beat It — and you know who he was. Michael had more talent in his little finger than any act today has among four men. Try wakin’ up tomorrow and writin’ We Are The World. See what you come up with. See if you can get Stevie and Tina to come down to the studio, along with Bruce and Billy and twenty other people who cost a whole hell of a lotta money at the time.

Michael was our music. The next time you’re out alone in your car, and Smooth Criminal comes on, it’s gonna mean somethin’ different to you. You’re not gonna change it this time. You’re gonna hear it and think to yourself, “I missed knowin’ his music in the moment.” I don’t blame The Cure. That was your call. The Cure is just out there, like car horns or people who make noise when they cry. The Cure is a choice. When we hear Michael, it is not a choice to feel the beat. It is not a choice to cock your head and straighten all the fingers on your right hand.

His story went out like a light today, and now all we have is his music. He can’t make any more mistakes.* We can’t say anything bad about him anymore.**

R.I.P., Michael. You moved more wax than anybody, player.***

-=Ray Smuckles=-
Achewood Estates, CA
June 25, 2009

* Unless there is something weird in his will.
** I wish this were true.
*** Except: The Beatles (they had a huge head start), Elvis (even bigger head start), and Bing Crosby (40-year head start, and declining super-fast).

"Moon" was really good, worth seeing. It could have stood a little trimming, but it felt like a classic 70s sci fi movie, with modern touches. Sam Rockwell's acting job was outstanding. It was a good deal quieter than the trailer might have implied, it was more of a drama than a space thriller. And it was fun playing "Spot the references" to SF classics, with the airlocks and general station look right out of "Alien", the shuttle clock from "Outland", the plants from "Silent Running", etc. Those references were kept subtle and the main storyline was character-driven thoughtful SF of a kind rarely seen in cinema. Well worth seeing.

"Up".. I dunno. Lower tier Pixar. I wasn't blown away by it, I gotta admit. I liked that it was an older protagonist for once, of course the emotional cues were there and I loved the acting and the dogs ("Squirrel!") and so on and so forth. It had its moments, but the general story beats of a Pixar movie are getting pretty well established at this point. You're gonna see a madcap chase or two, you're gonna see a mishmash of flawed protagonists taking on a cultured villain, you're gonna see a whimsically dumb character, you're gonna see emotional moments to give it depth.. I mean, it's not quite as by the numbers as Disney got to be but it's getting a little rote. This didn't feel all that fresh to me. The Disney-Pixar merger, I think improved Disney's animation and downgraded Pixar almost an equal amount. Bolt was a better Pixar movie than Up was.

The ready availability of an audience.

Pretty much any project I've cared to turn my hand to over the years, even as a dilettante or a hobbyist, it's possible to get a dozen or a hundred people together to have fun with it. Make a costume? DJ a dance? Write something? Draw artwork? Throw a party? There it is. Any creative endeavor you care to take on, you've got an audience providing support.

Say I was a bedroom DJ and wanted to play out in a club. Well, that's a whole lot of connections I don't have, I could press demos into the hands of club managers for months and never get anywhere. They hire their friends up from the local party scene, it has little to do with skill and a lot more to do with who you know. I've heard enough bad club DJs to know that. And even if you did play out you'd better be awesome or the crowd scatters and you won't be back again, replaced by someone's pal.

Furry on the other hand, even now that it's competitive, it's much easier to get a dance slot at a con than any club in any large city, and you can have fun with your friends in front of two or three hundred people!

Want to be an artist? Draw lots, post to FA, you'll get an audience. Show up at a con and do sketchbooks and bam you're an artist. And you can draw whatever, and I mean whatever, you want.

The barriers to entry in this fandom are incredibly low. This lets in nefarious people sometimes, but the benefits are enormous, you have almost total freedom. It's a scratch notebook. It's a built in audience with low expectations but high enthusiasm and support, which makes it possible to do something great.

That is such a rare treasure. I could never turn that away.