I talked to my friend, yesterday, about our Corpsatomic Project. We haven't done anything on it this year yet. I had planned on talking to her for half an hour, but we ended up going for an hour and a half. I think I like the process, of slowly coming up with an interesting idea by just opening the conversation with -- what's been going on with you lately? What's interesting you lately?
My friend is a talented artist. She's been able to draw ever since I can remember. She has a good eye. She cares particularly about style and beauty. She got into a prestigious art school for college. But she's been ambivalent about it. Yesterday she said, "Something to the tune of: I’m really good at this, but I don’t love to do it all the time, and doing it for money seems even worse." She described art as "kinda like my best chore."
I've felt ambient frustration about her ambivalence in the past. For me and writing, I've been working hard to eek every little last bit of talent out of me. To swing in so naturally gifted and not make a go of it seemed crazy. But of course, being good at it and liking to do it aren't always the same thing. In school, it seemed like the big push was talent and maybe work ethic, but in the arts -- or probably any field, actually -- it seems like the most important thing might be wanting to do that thing a lot. Being willing and motivated to work on it all the time. I don't think that's even work ethic; work ethic is more like getting yourself to do something whether you want to or not. This is more like doing a cannonball into the subject area. Swimming around in it whether you're talented or not, lazy or not, a perfectionist or not, even ambitious or not. I'm not sure what that trait would be called or how you could look out for it.
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