Day: September 12, 2000

Work Ethic

Although I’ve heard some bad reviews of it, I finally watched Cradle Will Rock and thought it was fantastic. Like a lot of films that try to bea little epic in scope, it relied on developing some characters in broad strokes and schtick (although Bill Murray did wonders within that), but the overall effect was wonderful. Just watch it some time, OK?

It poses an interesting question: At what point do you become a prostitute for your work? I’ve wrestled with that one a lot over the years — it’s hard to avoid in graphic design. I can’t say that always made the noble choice, but I’ve at least tried to be pretty selective about my bedfellows and choose, whenever possible, to do work that I felt good about in the end. It’s a tough one.

One of the toughest realizations I ever made was about the nature of my work: I’m not interested in pure artistry as much as I am in good craftsmanship and good communication. Even when I’ve worked in more traditionally artsy media, I have always been more interested in exploring the medium or fine-tuning my skills than in making art for art’s sake. There have been times, and there are sure to be more, when I have become my own client and chosen to use my skills to communicate some idea of my own, but that’s not the reason I work. When my own agenda and my work come together, that may be art, but I’m not so interested in pursuing it by that name. Let someone else decide if what I do is art or not: I’m more interested in knowing if I’ve solved the problem at hand. Maybe that makes me a whore once in a while, but at least I’m a whore not trying to convince himself he’s a paragon of virtue.

As for Bill Murray, before I completely forget, I’d like to know when his comic antics crossed that line into sublime performance. Watch Cradle Will Rock or Rushmore and you’ll see that he’s not just a goofball, but that he’s also capable of some really subtle, underplayed brilliance. I would recommend watching the Criterion Edition DVD of Rushmore so you can see Murray’s wry smarts in full effect on an episode of Charlie Rose.

Giving Me Strength

I’m listening to one of my birthday treats, Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach’s Painted from Memory. Although I’m fond of them both, I never had much of an urge to get the album until I rented Grace of My Heart, a sort of dreadful movie filled with wonderful music. God Give Me strength, the big showstopper penned by Elvis and Burt, gives me chills whenever I hear it. I like the Kristen Vigard’s movie version better (get it here), but the album one is also sublime, very well suited to Elvis voice.

Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are

I want you all to give a big, internet-style hug to my pal Steve, who recently had The Talk and came out to his folks. I’m glad to hear that things haven’t been as rocky as they first seemed after Steve dropped the bombshell, and I hope they continue to go well.

I was pretty worried when I first read that Steve had made the announcement and that his folks seemed upset, because I have been one of the people encouraging him to tell them, and I hoped I hadn’t made a huge mistake. A lot of the advice I ever give on the subject of coming out always draws from my own experience, which was pretty good, and from the reaction of my parents, who love their kids enough to get used to almost any new idea, it seems. There was this fear, though, that I hadn’t been a sterling example of the benefits of coming out to your parents and friends, but rather that I was just meddling in the life of someone I liked chatting with but just didn’t understand at all.

Those worries aside, I still believe it’s better to come out than not. Even if the process is fraught with anxiety, in the end I think it’s better to give people the chance to know you in a more complete way. When I came out to my folks (and basically everyone else at around the same time), it was just the first step in a larger effort to have them get to know me, and to get to know them — an effort to relate to my parents as friends and people I respected. It was good for all of us. Certainly it was good for me to be more open about the person I was with my folks, my other relatives, and with all my friends, and the world at large. It was good for them, too, because once they had a chance to think about it, to think about how being gay fit into a larger context of who I was, then they realized it wasn’t a tragedy, it was just another detail. It wasn’t some terrible thing that happened to other people’s kids — it was just another way to go about living one’s life.

That’s the value of coming out that I don’t see people talking about as much: the benefits for the people you tell. When you come out to the people you know, you give them a chance to reconsider how they have felt about relating to someone who’s gay. You give them a chance to grow a little, and to develop a fuller understanding not only of you, but of other people in the world. Yeah, it may suck if your mom breaks into tears right away or your dad gets all stony, but what happens later? That’s the important thing: What happens after you’ve given people a chance to really look at their preconceived notions and decide whether or not they’re valid? You give people one of hopefully many opportunities to develop a fuller, more open-minded understanding of how the world works, and of how people can live their lives. I think that’s good, even if the short-term results aren’t so spectacular. When someone really freaks about your being gay, it’s not only a tragedy for you, but also for that person: that’s someone whose mind has been locked down, who won’t let in a new idea, or who won’t care enough to let you choose your own path in life.

Granted, I have a pretty obvious bias on this subject, but can you blame me? I know lots of incredible people who like a little man-man or gal-gal lovin’. And I bet each of us has, at some pooint or another, made that light bulb appear over someone else’s head that siginifies, “Hey, it ain’t such a big thing after all, is it?”