Creating Just For Me, Recommending Just For Friends

Tatami Galaxy ep 2 reminded me of a conversation I had with Funeral today about one of my favorite musical artists, Omar Rodriguez-Lopez. Omar is the songwriter for the band The Mars Volta, with which he puts out an album about once per year, and he does a ridiculous amount of solo work, putting out around 4 albums a year himself. He also writes a lot of music that goes unreleased, such as what would’ve been the 6th album from TMV, which he scrapped because ‘it became boring to him.’ (Not that it mattered, as he was already recording the one which would’ve come next). Supposedly, he has so much recorded material that if he wanted to, he could keep releases going for years without doing any work (basically, the musical equivalent of ghostlightning.) He also apparently does some stuff which he just gives to friends, never intending to release it.

Funeral and I were discussing this, and later discussing recommendations. I commented that in my eyes, a hobby such as listening to music or watching anime is like a creative activity - it’s something you practice and get better at over time. 

I take recommendations very seriously and I don’t do them half-heartedly. When I recommend something to someone, it’s like helping them write a novel, only for their fandom. I try to give them something that I think will be important to their hobby and therefor to their life in some way.

This came up beacause a mutual friend of ours had posted on facebook that he wanted recommendations for black metal bands, and another mutual friend swooped in with a list of bands at max speed, obviously trying to beat others to the punch. Funeral thought it was silly, because friend two hadn’t taken the first friend’s tastes into consideration, and could just as easily have accidentally turned him off from the genre altogether. Funeral then pointed out more careful recommendations which’d be an easier bridge from his current tastes into the realm of the black metal genre. 

As I put it, “There’s a reason we talk about what shows make good gateway anime.’ You can’t expect your average guy to like your favorite shows if they’re about magical girls - it’s a long process that you have to undergo” - speaking from experience, of course, as it took me 3 years to sell my soul to mahou shoujo. 

Combining these thoughts, I said to Funeral ‘for me, recommendations are like those songs Omar records just for his friends. I don’t release recommendations to the world (anymore) because a more personal one is more effective.’

I only recommend things to people that I know will actually appreciate them. Recently, I wrote out a detailed recommendation list of over 60 shows for ghostlightning, because I know he takes recommendations seriously. I love giving music recommendations to Otou-san, because he actually listens to them on the spot (something no one else but Funeral or the aforementioned mutual friend has ever done on my recommendation.)

Why was the Tatami Galaxy episode important to all this? The message of the episode seemed to be that doing things for the people who understand them is enough to satisfy. In the ep, the main character joins a film club, the president of which does films for mass appeal and criticizes the main character for doing stupid films that no one cares about; at one point accusing him of ‘masturbation.’ The main character is fully aware that at least one woman enjoys his films, but he doesn’t let that inspire him or satisfy him - he’s too busy being pissed at the guy who made fun of his films. Maybe he would’ve been satisfied had he just made movies for the girl.

Art’s a difficult thing. As an artist, there’s almost always a disconnect between what you want to do and what people want to see. The key is balancing them. If you want to make things just for you, do so. If you want to make things for mass appeal, do so; and if you want to make a career, you have to do so.

I’ve known of artists who were amazing, but didn’t make a career of art nor want to. They worked normal jobs, doing art on the side, and were satisfied. I thought I could be like that for a while, but it was futile - I want to do art as a career. The hard part is balancing it with the things I want to do for me, because my tastes are pretty boogie. 

In some areas, I noticed that being pop didn’t matter. For a long time, I tried to be boogie-pop with my anime blogging, but eventually I realized that A. I can’t make money off of anime blogging anyway, and B. I do it for myself, not for anyone else, so what was the point of being pop with it at all? So now my blog is purely boogie. No precise release schedule, whatever subject matter I want… freedom. 

But I want to be a writer, and so I still have this boogie-pop style I’m trying to do. But why let that be all I do? I think I’m overstressing about it. I’m going to write a boogie-pop novel and get money one day, but that doesn’t mean I can’t write boogie stuff on the side. I never finish my side-projects because I always want that boogie-pop style, because I treat every project like ‘this one could be the breakthrough one;’ but why do that? Let the one which comes out like the breakthrough be the breakthrough, and let the ones that come out boogie be boogie. Trying to force it isn’t going to come out pretty at all. 

I gave up on being a director a long time ago, but I still love to film. Just because I don’t plan to make a career of making movies doesn’t mean I should stop making them. My brother and I finally got back to making comedy skits (vid forthcoming) in the style we used to do when it wasn’t serious, and it’s great because my brother is actually still trying to become a director (following a *much* more serious path than I ever did) and he already understands that a video we do for friends doesn’t need to be top-quality (trying to do so being why we stopped making videos for a long time.) 

In my life, I’ve gradually been trying to make everything as chill as possible, and it’s working beautifully. My whole Creative Mode vs. Consumer Mode thing has been a huge relief of stress, and this new revelation of sorts has given me all kinds of confidence. Funeral and I even have some plans to record a black metal album. Maybe I’ll let you hear it.