I used to be similarly lost in the drama of my own life, hanging on to things that I felt made me special. It's an ego trap in my opinion, as there are millions of people around us who have extrodinary lives that we never hear about. The word "sonder" applies:
Sonder is defined as the profound feeling of realizing that everyone, including strangers passing by on the street, has a life as complex and vivid as your own. They experience hopes, dreams, friendships, routines, worries and an inner life, all of which you'll likely never know about or fully understand.
The term was coined by John Koenig in The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, a compendium of newly invented words for powerful feelings that don't have a descriptive term in the English language.
I had a sponser do me a favor once and tell me "you're a special case of the same old thing." It helped me get over myself.
Counterpoint to that would be that no matter how interesting other people's lives may be, mine is still special because it's the only viewpoint I can actually have (before you hippies come at me I've done enough LSD and meditation and no I still only have my viewpoint). My dramas and problems are more important than everyone elses to me since I'm the one who has to deal with them. They're not more important in an objective sense, but I am not an objective creature living in the clouds.
My life is special to me too, but I don't feel like the main character anymore. My family appreciates my move out of self-absorption towards giving them the attention they deserve from me.
> Sonder is defined as the profound feeling of realizing that everyone, including strangers passing by on the street, has a life as complex and vivid as your own.
That's all? I always kind of assumed they had more going on. Hoped it, for their sakes.
I think of The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows as an art project. I never got the impression that we were supposed to start using these words. It's interesting and entertaining, like when I learned the Czech word "litost" from "The Book of Laughter and Forgetting" by Milan Kundera. "Litost is a state of torment created by the sudden sight of one’s own misery."
Part five of this book is about Litost, a kind of misery-induced torment only known to the Czech people. You could see it is a Slavic thing.
Most other comments so far have viewed this artist's lifestyle negatively, as he wrote that he got by via abusing various policies and tax fraud (via "[hallucinating] a DJ software skin" to claim as a business expense). But he's an interesting person for sticking to his craft for close to a decade now: he has persisted in working hard to produce artwork and submit it for exhibition.
However, to what extent is this lifestyle necessary as an artist? A common piece of advice for many artists is to consider developing a steady career independent of one's art, which lets them afford their lifestyle as an artist (such as by writing, creating artwork, or performing during the evenings and weekends). But the effectiveness of this advice must vary for the individual: it's also common for many people to drop their artwork or stop taking it seriously in favour of their paying career.
For this artist in particular, I wonder if a steady job would have been a positive or negative to his art. In this case, the income would have reduced his suffering especially as he's dealing with medical debt. It could have even granted him additional artistic freedom, as he writes about the pressures to "defect" and his acceptance of more commercial work for money. Yet at the same time, it's possible that part of the desperation is behind his drive as an artist—though it's also risky to romanticize this desperation.
> "[hallucinating] a DJ software skin" to claim as a business expense
I don't think he's claiming a hallucinated skin as a business expense. Rather he's saying the Turbotax UI has some slider in it, and he hallucinates that Turbotax is instead DJ software, and he slides that slider around like a DJ would slide a sound modulator slider around, arriving at a fraudulent number.
I don't think the lifestyle is related to the art but the person. I have friends with similar lifestyles and stories even down to the avoiding homelessness by pet sitting, and being shitty at it. Yet art or any sort of creative endeavor isn't part of the equation. Then I have some friends deeply devoted to their art that wouldn't ever consider approaching homelessness. The most successful artist I know is a landscaper and he could certainly live a successful by any standard life on purely his art but it's just not in his nature to live in that way.
All people, artistic or not, have a certain tolerance for ignoring social standards. Some of the best artists are known to have a very high tolerance. But there's millions more people with similarly chaotic existences that don't care about art and creative activities at all.
Our choices about what we do (as a craft/career/industry/etc.) aren’t solely dictated by things like “because I can be nothing else.” Mostly because I doubt that most people (including myself) would even have the ability to answer that question for themselves.
I have no idea how everyone ended up doing what they are doing, but I know that mine wasnt dictated by that at all. At 18, when I was about to graduate high school, I had absolutely zero sense about who I can or cannot be. Over a decade later, I have a slightly better grasp on it. But it barely moved the needle, and I still have no idea who i can or cannot be.
I picked CS (computer science) as my degree. I had almost no experience with writing code (turbopascal 5 years prior for a semester doesn’t count), and i was behind most of my classmates in that aspect (who tested out of the first two intro courses, since they either had HS internships or AP CS credits or just personal projects like published apps and guthub repos).
Well actually, originally I picked EE (electrical engineering), but then I switched during the second day of the summer orientation for incoming freshmen to CS. Once we got to registering for the first semester of classes on the second day, I saw the choice of classes I had vs. what CS students had. The descriptions just sounded more interesting to me.
Did I base my choice at any given point based on who I thought I could be? Not at all. I had zero knowledge that led me to believe I would be a more capable CS graduate (as opposed to EE). I also chose not to go for pre-med, despite my parents’ wishes, but it also had nothing to do with who I thought I could or couldn’t be. I am glad I didnt go that route, because after developing an ongoing friendship with a guy who eventually became a licensed dermatologist, I learned a lot of things that led me to believe I couldn’t be a doctor (not without losing my sanity, at least).
I guess the point along this longwinded reply is, I don’t buy it even for a second that a significant number of artists picked their field because they didnt think they could be something else. Most of them are people just like you and me, and I believe they are just as aware that they have no idea as to whom they can and cannot be. At the very best, they would have a short list of who they know they cannot be (just like i know i could never be a doctor).
It's pretty reasonable to make a living if you're a decent painter, musician, or photographer. There's just not a great overlap of art and business skills.
> However, to what extent is this lifestyle necessary as an artist?
I have a stable career and lots of disposable income and I've been to 1/10th the places this guy has been to / done 1/10th the things / probably have 1/10th the stories/life experiences/friends
It's pretty sad, actually, how much negative vibe is here.
This man is hustle culture personified. What's the problem?
Alternatively, he's the epitome of a "disruptor". What's the issue?
Oh, perhaps it's that he's holding up a light at what is at the end of the tunnel if we keep going the way society is--complete instability for the peons who are completely at the whim of a small number of the rich.
He got drunk, did a bunch of coke, and stole a brass penguin from the hotel he was staying at; also a spot of tax fraud and theft of a suit, but I care less about that.
I get that the lobby of the Hilton is not an art gallery, but an artist stealing a sculpture is not hustle culture personified, it's theft of the exact kind he should hate most.
The story is great and I appreciate it on its own merits but he's kind of a dick.
> For this artist in particular, I wonder if a steady job would have been a positive or negative to his art.
There’s a lot to read between the lines here, but if I were a betting man, I wouldn’t put a lot on the author being the sort to maintain a steady job for the long run.
I don’t mean that as a critique - the world needs all sorts, but capitalism’s got more strict opinions.
I think people confuse prudent with good. I don't think this person would be delusional enough to think their choices were prudent by "polite" society's standards, especially when describing himself as a crust punk-- a subculture that prides itself on eschewing damn near everything that "polite" society values. However, it's also pretty bullshit that someone who makes art that people want and has an opinion interesting enough to have academic cachet needs to essentially bottom feed to stay afloat in the most fundamental ways. Art is important to humanity, but capitalism isn't super great at supporting things with intrinsic cultural value but no mercantile utility.
Especially since the popularization of AI image generators, many folks in the tech crowd-- few of whom could name a single influential work, author, or organization in arts scholarship-- have unwarrantedly strong opinions on the nature of art. They tend to cite the lack of market value in fine art as justification for neither paying artists for their ingested works, nor for the amalgams the produced models spit out. But when confronted with the fact that most artists are not working in fine art, but working commercial artists, they will cite their commercially concerns as evidence that modern art and artists are soulless and not worth protecting to begin with.
Honestly, the longer you work in the arts the more you shrug your shoulders at it. People have spent millennia holding all but the most famous artists and designers in contempt while art in some form, deliberately and thoughtfully made by someone with great skill, imbues nearly every aspect of our cultures. There's always a new cohort of people wanting to extract more out of artists for their own gain-- either in art or income-- while calling artists selfish for wanting a slice and telling them to get a "real job". Such is life.
As someone teaching at an art school/university I can assure you that unhealthy drives for art often (but not nearly always!) have hard psychological causes. That brings all kins of hardships with itself, many of those artists live unhealthy, often impoverished, rarely stable lives. And while the romatic view of the impoverished artist is a popular one, these people are rarely as free as they like they would be and I have seen suicides happen.
Most artists I know would love to have stability, yet in society there is rarely space and funding for the things they are doing. I know people who had to move their ateliers 4 times in 10 years, just because the landlords use them to make the rental/area more attractive to a better pating clientel and then kick them out.
It is intellectually amusing to read, and I'm sure to write, a character that the reader hates. But the detachment becomes exhausting quick. It's a dead end; you spent all of this effort being clever, with what to show for it? After reading it, I find myself questioning which side of the joke is real and which is false, and whether I'm in the real part of the joke or the false part. Which is ultimately a fruitless exercise, since the whole thing is intentionally set up to be pointless. Got me, I guess?
It just sounds like an artist who is trying really hard to be an artist and forgetting that real artists don't try, they just do what they like and someone else loves it.
But also the compulsive lying, the drugs, the weird lack of self awareness is cringe inducing here.
The question I have not yet seen in the comments here is whether or not this post is real or fiction. Is it the journal of a questionable character, or a deliberate attempt to push people's buttons?
And honestly, that is why I like it. I really hope it cannot be taken at face value - that would be disappointment.
All the true stories you actually bother to read are a little fictive.
That said, he said two specific relationships with real people that I know, by name, and you know what? He’s telling it like it was in those cases.
The least real thing about this is that, reading carefully, the only antagonists are the occasional grant committee members who reject him. To me, in real life, fine artists are quite opinionated and tend to beef with a lot of people; or have no opinions, and are pigeonholed into doing the same exact thing that once, long ago, got them an audience, over and over again. Andrew does not belong to this latter group.
I don't see anything about a movie called Interlaken being developed. On IMDB, I do see an Andrew Norman Wilson as the director of the short films he mentions in the article.
Who knows about the individual details in it. I'm sure it's sort of directionally true. It's believable at any rate.
> Is it the journal of a questionable character, or a deliberate attempt to push people's buttons?
Reminds me of some of Hunter S Thompson's writing (who always insisted his sordid semi-autobiographical tales were drawn directly from even more depraved true events).
It seems like some art student guy's journey leveling up from food coupon couch surfing to movie director. Dunno if real or not or what the point is. Feels like trolling to piss people off?
Chinaski was working for a living, this guy would rather cheat and steal, as he thinks labor is beneath him (he described a regular cleaner's job as "demeaning").
Maybe - this is clearly someone who enjoys blurring the line between reality and fiction, so a their tagging of their own work might be equally blurry.
I don’t think hacker culture is dead. Rather, computing entered its Eternal September; a career in software engineering, especially in the United States, now carries a similar cachet to being a doctor or lawyer, and the startup world has attracted those who want to make a fortune. The geeks, nerds, scholars, artists, and other varied misfits who once dominated the field have been outnumbered by those looking for money.
This is the price of computing’s success. It’s not all bad or all good, it just is a natural consequence of computing becoming an integral part of modern society.
It’s not just money they made so much money they actually dislodged and eliminated the conditions and opportunities that created hacker culture in the first place
I read HN almost daily and comment here often, but I don't like the name. I wish they'd chosen to call it something more like "startup news" instead, as that feels like a more accurate representation of the site and its community and standards.
I liked it. I also think he sounds like a dick and a tiring man to know, and I'm confused by the people who themselves confuse dislike for the person with dislike for the writing.
Meh. I think it's just endemic of online gatherings of programmers that the discussions seep with a strong sense of intellectual and moral superiority. We are the type to feel like we have life and the world figured out.
This was a great read and reminiscent of Kerouac (to me). It also makes me think of a life a consciously decided I didn't want after I finished art academy. I've seen others who did and got out after decades of trying and failing. I was lucky to figure out that going to art school to become an artist is a pipe dream.
artist fixes rib story = a how-to guide (expressed in the reciprocal "how-did" form) discussing the narrator's passage through a niche and mildly exotic experience. It answers a question the reader never asked, but potentially might have.
whereas artist recounting his struggles = a series of open-ended "why-did" vignettes with none offering escape from a cycle of precarity, except for the obvious solution to discontinue throwing oneself on the sword of Art. a solution which is intentionally and elaborately avoided by a narrator who does not supply a relatable (never mind satisfying) motivation or justification. I may be giving him too much credit, but there's a decent chance the vague sense of being stifled by this brief immersion in a world fundamentally unsuited to your own nature is an intended effect.
This man has lived a life many fantasise about, although perhaps not a very comfortable one. I think sometimes I lived a colourful, varied life but what a story for this piece.
I can't believe I have to do the reddit edit postscriptum but really, does everyone dislike the author? I certainly could never be this sort of person, but what a story, living life on the edge and making it up as they go along. Do commenters never daydream, like just imagine how life would be if things had turned out differently?
The reason why so many people dislike the author is because he's incessantly creating problems for other people. If he only did it for himself, the outlook would probably be more sympathetic.
I didn't read it super closely but it doesn't seem like he's blaming anyone but himself (and chance) for his various problems. For that, I can respect it. Even if I have a very hard time imagining what it would take for me to choose it.
Readit News
Sonder is defined as the profound feeling of realizing that everyone, including strangers passing by on the street, has a life as complex and vivid as your own. They experience hopes, dreams, friendships, routines, worries and an inner life, all of which you'll likely never know about or fully understand.
The term was coined by John Koenig in The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, a compendium of newly invented words for powerful feelings that don't have a descriptive term in the English language.
I had a sponser do me a favor once and tell me "you're a special case of the same old thing." It helped me get over myself.
That's all? I always kind of assumed they had more going on. Hoped it, for their sakes.
One form is "besonders" which can be translated as particular, peculiar, unique.
In English maybe well known is "Sonderkommando" which can be translated as special troop.
Part five of this book is about Litost, a kind of misery-induced torment only known to the Czech people. You could see it is a Slavic thing.
https://fictionbeast.com/milan-kundera-the-unbearable-ligthn...
Something akin to how I felt trapped in my own drama
Is there some other way words are created besides people just sort of using them?
However, to what extent is this lifestyle necessary as an artist? A common piece of advice for many artists is to consider developing a steady career independent of one's art, which lets them afford their lifestyle as an artist (such as by writing, creating artwork, or performing during the evenings and weekends). But the effectiveness of this advice must vary for the individual: it's also common for many people to drop their artwork or stop taking it seriously in favour of their paying career.
For this artist in particular, I wonder if a steady job would have been a positive or negative to his art. In this case, the income would have reduced his suffering especially as he's dealing with medical debt. It could have even granted him additional artistic freedom, as he writes about the pressures to "defect" and his acceptance of more commercial work for money. Yet at the same time, it's possible that part of the desperation is behind his drive as an artist—though it's also risky to romanticize this desperation.
I don't think he's claiming a hallucinated skin as a business expense. Rather he's saying the Turbotax UI has some slider in it, and he hallucinates that Turbotax is instead DJ software, and he slides that slider around like a DJ would slide a sound modulator slider around, arriving at a fraudulent number.
All people, artistic or not, have a certain tolerance for ignoring social standards. Some of the best artists are known to have a very high tolerance. But there's millions more people with similarly chaotic existences that don't care about art and creative activities at all.
So, it’s a rare person indeed who can be a serious artist and support themselves financially some other way
I have no idea how everyone ended up doing what they are doing, but I know that mine wasnt dictated by that at all. At 18, when I was about to graduate high school, I had absolutely zero sense about who I can or cannot be. Over a decade later, I have a slightly better grasp on it. But it barely moved the needle, and I still have no idea who i can or cannot be.
I picked CS (computer science) as my degree. I had almost no experience with writing code (turbopascal 5 years prior for a semester doesn’t count), and i was behind most of my classmates in that aspect (who tested out of the first two intro courses, since they either had HS internships or AP CS credits or just personal projects like published apps and guthub repos).
Well actually, originally I picked EE (electrical engineering), but then I switched during the second day of the summer orientation for incoming freshmen to CS. Once we got to registering for the first semester of classes on the second day, I saw the choice of classes I had vs. what CS students had. The descriptions just sounded more interesting to me.
Did I base my choice at any given point based on who I thought I could be? Not at all. I had zero knowledge that led me to believe I would be a more capable CS graduate (as opposed to EE). I also chose not to go for pre-med, despite my parents’ wishes, but it also had nothing to do with who I thought I could or couldn’t be. I am glad I didnt go that route, because after developing an ongoing friendship with a guy who eventually became a licensed dermatologist, I learned a lot of things that led me to believe I couldn’t be a doctor (not without losing my sanity, at least).
I guess the point along this longwinded reply is, I don’t buy it even for a second that a significant number of artists picked their field because they didnt think they could be something else. Most of them are people just like you and me, and I believe they are just as aware that they have no idea as to whom they can and cannot be. At the very best, they would have a short list of who they know they cannot be (just like i know i could never be a doctor).
I have a stable career and lots of disposable income and I've been to 1/10th the places this guy has been to / done 1/10th the things / probably have 1/10th the stories/life experiences/friends
This man is hustle culture personified. What's the problem?
Alternatively, he's the epitome of a "disruptor". What's the issue?
Oh, perhaps it's that he's holding up a light at what is at the end of the tunnel if we keep going the way society is--complete instability for the peons who are completely at the whim of a small number of the rich.
I get that the lobby of the Hilton is not an art gallery, but an artist stealing a sculpture is not hustle culture personified, it's theft of the exact kind he should hate most.
The story is great and I appreciate it on its own merits but he's kind of a dick.
Also how is he a disruptor? It seems like he's someone that has been VERY lucky to get opportunities many people strive for and he has fucked them up.
Then he acts like his only options are fraud and theft because there's always someone closing the door on him for being himself.
There’s a lot to read between the lines here, but if I were a betting man, I wouldn’t put a lot on the author being the sort to maintain a steady job for the long run.
I don’t mean that as a critique - the world needs all sorts, but capitalism’s got more strict opinions.
Especially since the popularization of AI image generators, many folks in the tech crowd-- few of whom could name a single influential work, author, or organization in arts scholarship-- have unwarrantedly strong opinions on the nature of art. They tend to cite the lack of market value in fine art as justification for neither paying artists for their ingested works, nor for the amalgams the produced models spit out. But when confronted with the fact that most artists are not working in fine art, but working commercial artists, they will cite their commercially concerns as evidence that modern art and artists are soulless and not worth protecting to begin with.
Honestly, the longer you work in the arts the more you shrug your shoulders at it. People have spent millennia holding all but the most famous artists and designers in contempt while art in some form, deliberately and thoughtfully made by someone with great skill, imbues nearly every aspect of our cultures. There's always a new cohort of people wanting to extract more out of artists for their own gain-- either in art or income-- while calling artists selfish for wanting a slice and telling them to get a "real job". Such is life.
Most artists I know would love to have stability, yet in society there is rarely space and funding for the things they are doing. I know people who had to move their ateliers 4 times in 10 years, just because the landlords use them to make the rental/area more attractive to a better pating clientel and then kick them out.
It is intellectually amusing to read, and I'm sure to write, a character that the reader hates. But the detachment becomes exhausting quick. It's a dead end; you spent all of this effort being clever, with what to show for it? After reading it, I find myself questioning which side of the joke is real and which is false, and whether I'm in the real part of the joke or the false part. Which is ultimately a fruitless exercise, since the whole thing is intentionally set up to be pointless. Got me, I guess?
I do like the visuals though.
But also the compulsive lying, the drugs, the weird lack of self awareness is cringe inducing here.
And honestly, that is why I like it. I really hope it cannot be taken at face value - that would be disappointment.
That said, he said two specific relationships with real people that I know, by name, and you know what? He’s telling it like it was in those cases.
The least real thing about this is that, reading carefully, the only antagonists are the occasional grant committee members who reject him. To me, in real life, fine artists are quite opinionated and tend to beef with a lot of people; or have no opinions, and are pigeonholed into doing the same exact thing that once, long ago, got them an audience, over and over again. Andrew does not belong to this latter group.
Who knows about the individual details in it. I'm sure it's sort of directionally true. It's believable at any rate.
Reminds me of some of Hunter S Thompson's writing (who always insisted his sordid semi-autobiographical tales were drawn directly from even more depraved true events).
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Well, he has one other post on the same site that is explicitly marked fiction, where this one is not. That may be a clue.
I suspect both, and I’d suspect the author’s the sort who wouldn’t stay in one category no matter the circumstances.
This is the price of computing’s success. It’s not all bad or all good, it just is a natural consequence of computing becoming an integral part of modern society.
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“No one wants to listen to an artist describe their work, but everyone wants to be told my rib story.”
whereas artist recounting his struggles = a series of open-ended "why-did" vignettes with none offering escape from a cycle of precarity, except for the obvious solution to discontinue throwing oneself on the sword of Art. a solution which is intentionally and elaborately avoided by a narrator who does not supply a relatable (never mind satisfying) motivation or justification. I may be giving him too much credit, but there's a decent chance the vague sense of being stifled by this brief immersion in a world fundamentally unsuited to your own nature is an intended effect.
I can't believe I have to do the reddit edit postscriptum but really, does everyone dislike the author? I certainly could never be this sort of person, but what a story, living life on the edge and making it up as they go along. Do commenters never daydream, like just imagine how life would be if things had turned out differently?