Good Art Friends
After this you can stop thinking about it...
It’s ADHD Awareness Month! I have a few posts in the works—something practical and something in my feelings, so be on the lookout!
Much has been said about Robert Kolker’s Bad Art Friend article, the most widely-read article about kidney donations in the history of time (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, you can read a synopsis here and then go make sure your internet is working). At this point, we’ve beaten this story into the ground, but the fact remains that I cannot stop thinking about what the tale of Dawn Dorland and Sonya Larson, who battle over whether the personal experiences and words or one can be used as writing inspiration, without consent, by the other, says about people who make and inspire art and their relationships to one another.
One of the great dramatic reveals of the piece centers around the release of several private group texts between writers, essentially talking some serious shit about one of the women involved. Many have joked about how this is the most harrowing part of the tale; the idea of our private texts being subpoenaed, and many have defended the right to shit-talk privately about other artists.
I love a good shit talk. I will talk violently and with great detail about the shortcomings of a wide range of subjects; our washer-dryer, Bon Jovi, every single kind of quiche. In my youth, and at times, now, I am also known to shit talk, privately, about real people (I don’t count Jon Bon Jovi in this category), but the models provided by so many of the people I think and create with have softened this. I will go to bat when, say, someone writes a bad-faith, inaccurate review of a friend’s work, but in the company I keep, I find we are all more interested, personally and creatively, in taking the perspective of such a person, in identifying aspects of their art that feel inauthentic and cruel, and why they feel that way to us, than in doling out cruelties for no other purpose than our own comfort.
This week, my friend Garrett sent me this piece written by someone who knows both women in the story, talking about how artists should really support one another. On the email chain, with another friend, we began talking about the ways we are “Good Art Friends” to each other and to others. Garrett wrote:
“One of the things that stood out to me…was the text group whose only way of showing solidarity with and love to their friend was talking crap about an outsider. I still can't get over the mean group texts (nor the common response I saw to them, namely "oh, everybody is mean in group texts."). By contrast, one of the many, many things I love about..(our text chains)…is that it's a model for all sorts of things-- irreverence, nonsense, reflection, self-criticism, more nonsense AND processing-difficult-experiences-with-other-people-without-defaulting -into-meanness-or shit-talking. When you needed to write through a lot of complicated feelings about Emily Oster's writing, for example, you did so in a way that honored both why you felt a need to call her into accountability and all the things she's meant to you in the past….I think it's made all three of our writing better, to be honest, because we don't give each other the easy out of simple, dichotomous thinking AND it inculcates more trust (because I don't have to always worry "oh, if I'm ever on the outside of this pair, are they going to be as mean to me as we are to other people on this text chain").”
This particular Good Art Friend, when you message him with a gut reaction to an art-related wound, will listen and offer condolences and perhaps suggest a knife fight but will follow it up with “what does this make you wish were different?” or “how is this all sitting with you?” The knife fight is, then, an opportunity to raise the stakes and press the question of “what does this interaction really say about me and my art?” rather than “who can I blindly stab in the shadows on your behalf?”
Last summer, in an attempt to actually make plans that I frequently wax on about but am too afraid to act on happen, I started a weekly “creative group" for women. I put a post out to my women’s group and a few friends, talked schedules, and landed with a group of four other women, most of whom I had never had a private conversation with. I got very, very lucky. This group, all of whom are mothers and most of whom have other, sometimes full-time “less creative” jobs, has met every single Wednesday at 1pm since August, 2020. What makes these four women Good Art Friends? All of the things you’d expect, of course. We are a consistent source of witnessing one-another as artists, even when the world doesn’t see us that way. We act as accountability buddies, editors, PR agents, hype-women. When I have even the smallest creative success, I know these women will feel real delight, and send me congratulatory gifs when I tell them about it. When I am in a creative funk, I know they will remind me of why I do this, and the fact that I will do it, and love it, again soon. And, I know that when I have challenges with someone else’s art, or someone has challenges with mine, they will not do me the disservice of blindly accepting or dismissing those challenges. They want to know, with love, why I am having the reaction I may be having, or what, if anything, in someone else’s critique, makes me want do better for myself.
A Good Art Friend does all of these things. They forgive you and retweet you and cheer you and give you the benefit of the doubt, and they make you expand and get graceful and own your mistakes when grace simply wasn’t on the table this time. Sometimes being a Good Art Friend is hard, especially when your art friend is struggling, or mad, or in the case of Sonya Larson, under attack for something they could have dealt with better. But art is meant to challenge us, isn’t it? Like a good friend :)
Who are your Good Art Friends and what do they do for you???
Also, this:
My husband and I have decided we want to be Paul Hollywood and Prue Leith for Halloween, though we are currently fighting over who gets to be who. I have a dream of baking and handing out the grossest, most English-ass pastry that has ever been featured on the show, but there are sooooo many options. This list is a start but still lacking—dried, booze-soaked fruit is a must, or something rolled into a stupid swirl, or piping-hot suet….suggestions welcome!
I obviously love this. It makes me think about what the principles of a Good Art Friend could be, because it's mostly about heaping love on people, but it's also about showing up consistently and caring enough about the work to be constructive, too. Being a Good Art Friend feels different sometimes across racial and class lines, too, something that's come up a lot in my friendships. Are you making art just for the hell of it? Or do you need to make some money? Do you have lots of contacts and a well established platform, or are you struggling to get those things--and how does that feel to be navigating among friends? Is the person giving feedback mindful of the limitations of their own POV? Just so much to think about. I know it can also just be fun and loving, but thought I'd add on some of these layers. Because GOOD ART FRIENDS!
Thanks for taking the focus off of gossip and shit-talking and onto Good Art Friends...and congrats on having a long-standing group of Good Art Friends! (August 2020 was forever ago!) But how important is the "Art" here? Do you need something creative that's both personal and public to convene about? Or is it more about just convening intentionally with Good Insert-Endeavor-Here Friends? Or does there even need to be an endeavor? Is there a lesson here about just how to be a good friend? Is being a Good Friend irl the same as being a Good Friend on a text chain/social media space? Ok I've spun out of control and into my own current struggles...but thanks for getting me thinking!