My Million Dollar Blog

“The difference between life and art is that art is more bearable.”

– Charles Bukowski

Been thinking a lot about the whole life vs art question lately, summed up angstily and succinctly by Bukowski above. (Any man who’s known for saying “Sometimes you just have to pee in the sink” as he is for his contribution to literature is someone I consider having something to say.)

I get a lot of flak for “not making art” or for the art being secondary to money, and it’s given me pause; not because I’m questioning whether this is art but rather what’s making the audience react that way. I think the issue here is that I take the “art” in this process as a given and therefore just get on with it and don’t spend a lot of time pointing out all the ways that this qualifies as art, and maybe that’s where I come under fire. I probably should do it more often, but quite frankly I’ve got enough to do in a day, and anyone who thinks performance art is a waste of time isn’t going to be convinced anyway.

I don’t think that this process is any less art than anything else, but because it takes a long time and is a slow process and every iota is documented and indexed it starts to look just like putting one’s life online and not like a performative art piece of any kind. To be totally honest, I don’t care if it LOOKS like art; I’d rather worry about what the process is revealing and what it’s doing rather than whether it fits a definition that changes depending on who you talk to.

I’ve done a lot of long performances, but this is so far outside the scope of anything I’ve ever attempted that I can’t predict it, I can’t predict my own reactions, and I kind of lose sight of the whole thing sometimes. I got all down about a week ago because I didn’t feel I was a working artist - which is, frankly, fucking stupid, all I do these days is work on art, all the last ten months have been about is making a giant ball of capital-A art. But because the line between art and life is so blurred and crosses over so much, it becomes hard to maintain perspective and tell one from the other.

I have to say that making art out of what you set out to do every single day is draining, and I never, ever, ever, ever get away from it, there’s nowhere to go, if I’m doing something some weekend it’s all part of the process, if I stay up late and work a lot or don’t work at all it all matters, there’s no studio to retreat to or go home from. If I stray just a little into the “what if all this is a grand failure” then it’s not the art that’s up for judgement, but my life. That’s enough to keep any girl on the side of bright-eyed faith; what other choice do I have?

In other news, lost on the lottery this weekend. Dang.

Been calling around to try and find a venue for the end-of-November screening. It’s tough to find somewhere that’s not going to charge and arm and a leg and who can convince me that they’re not going to try to rob me blind.

There’s a venue out there, I just have to find it. I think this event is going to be fantastic.

Man but I have a whole lotta footage to watch.

Made $100 today by making dinner for a very nice lady that answered my Craigslist ad. (Note to self: post that thing again.) It was an unnaturally relaxing time - so relaxing in fact that I told the person who was supposed to help me film not to come after all because I was having a good time doing it alone.

It’s weird, the documentation that I get when I’m by myself and when I’m with someone else is totally different. I can talk to the camera myself for hours and pull out some really funny and candid stuff, but when someone else is holding it I get all weird and nervous and like I’m always saying the wrong thing.

Anyway. It was a cloudy afternoon and I was making ragu that had to simmer for 3 hours at least so I decided to do what anyone does when they’re waiting on a sauce: chop wood.

The lady who lives there told me before she left that if I wanted I could chop some wood for her, and that she’d just bought a new axe. Since it was a) hilarious, b) good footage, and c) something physical, I gathered up some logs and the chopping block as well as the axe and chopped away.

Know all those movies you see with pioneer dudes chopping wood and their axe always CHOPS THE WOOD NEATLY IN HALF in only one hit? Well, smoke and mirrors, my friends.

Don’t get me wrong - this bitch can swing an axe. (Thank you mandatory wood class in university.) I know what the wood’s supposed to do, where the axe is supposed to hit and how it splits and all that, but it’s been awhile since I did anything even remotely close to woodchopping, and dear reader, let me assure you that it doesn’t work as easily as it does on TV.

I split about six in the end, with much bravado and Godzilla-like posturing when I did, and was quickly reminded that I have the back of a city kid, not of a sinewy outdoorsman. But I managed not to chop off anything vital, and any day that ends with all my limbs is a good day indeed.

Also: the $54 million lottery draw was tonight, and you can bet yo momma that I had a ticket. It lost horribly. Some lucky bastard, reportedly in the prairies, won the whole thing though, I’m sure they’ll be in the paper tomorrow.

Not tonight, but it can all change tomorrow.

So with the first decent sleep I’ve had since, oh, 1998, I worked myself into the ground and now everything hurts.

Tomorrow I make a no gluten no dairy meal for two and tidy up a house for a tidy profit. Hoorah.

Also cleaned up a house today for $40 - which is going to be weekly until the end of the year - and THE TOTAL HAS ROLLED OVER THE $4k MARK!

There was a $40 million 649 draw tonight. Yes, I had a ticket. No, I haven’t checked the numbers yet.

I am seriously considering a screening of the best-of from this year so far as well as a Q&A at the end of November. This would necessitate putting together an hour of footage but hey, I’ve done more in less time.

If you’re in Toronto, keep your eyes on the skies … and join the mailing list so you get to be the first to get a ticket!

Wow.

I got home last night after painting two bathrooms on about three hours of sleep. I was profoundly exhausted, ate something and thought “maybe I’ll just take a nap here in front of a movie.” That was about 9.30.

I woke up at 8.30 this morning.

I feel like a new person.

I think I discount how much sleep I’m going without. I feel sort of guilty because there was a lot of stuff I wanted to do last night, but on the other hand I feel better than I have in weeks.

So there you go.

Finally My Million Dollar Bake Sale is up and running. (Click here to check it out!) One of the most seemingly simple schemes this year that quickly turned into a gigantic production. I have the utmost respect for anyone that can make a passable gingerbread man. The cookies really are good though, and if you’re feeling really hungry you can even buy them with a bottle of Jones Soda. Mmmm!

The total at the side went up because I did another day of hauling and sorting this weekend and am painting some bathrooms tomorrow. I’ve got a lasagna to make later this week. This odd jobs thing is definitely keeping me busy. It’s great for footage as well.

I got a blog comment yesterday that I thought was thought-provoking. I don’t usually respond to this sort of thing because it’s kind of pointless because most people don’t want an answer, but this one eloquently stated a lot of criticism that I get and is worth talking about because it touches on a lot of points I usually don’t get the chance to write about. Here it is:

I’ve been following this project on and off since the beggining, often in silent support. However, there is something that has always bothered me about it. It’s the fact that you don’t seem to offer a critique of the monetary system, or profitism. You seem rather to support these things. It is true that the making of money can be an art form, but it is one that causes far more harm than good. The goal of art is expression, not profit, but the goal of your project is money, the art is secondary. There lies the break for me, it’s not so much that you’re selling out that bothers me, but rather that you’re buying in.

Honestly, I wonder sometimes if I’m not being clear with my objectives here, and I know in some ways I’m not because it’s pointless at this stage. I think the most basic supposition I get is that this is a completely planned project that I’m carrying out already knowing the answers and outcome, and not a process that I’m making up as I go along, a process where finding answers through experience is paramount, and a constantly developing work of art. I withhold judgement as much as I can on money and try to develop what I think about money through what I actually experience, and by withholding judgement it’s assumed that I am missing the point, agreeing with the status quo, or both.

It seems that people are used to being communicated in a certain way, with seamless production values that mask the fact that some part of the production may not be completely under control, even when it’s supposedly spontaneous. This isn’t the case here: I am making this up as I go along because there is no precident for what I’m doing. I am accepting this as a developing work and refusing to pass judgement on it until it’s over, which it ain’t.

The comment above also assumes that a) I am supposed to be critiquing the monetary system and not doing that, b) that this system causes more harm than good and that I’m buying into it, and c) that art is secondary to money in this project. I think that showing what a backlash can be created just through the simple act of claiming you’re going to make a million dollars says a lot about the current attitudes towards money. I think showing my life as someone young and hopelessly in debt because of an education critiques the current system. I think showing the struggle that I’ve put myself in by refusing the status quo is pretty critical as well. Above all I’m mostly trying to figure out what the monetary system IS and how it affects us - I have my suspicions, but I’d rather show what I’m finding out through constant documentation of my exploration than blather on from an ivory tower.

I don’t believe that any system is inherently harmful. A lot of harm has been caused in the world by, for example, the pharmaceutical industry, in terms of animal testing, fatal side effects, environmental factors, over prescription encouraging viral mutation, and on and on. However, I’ve never been a cancer survivor. I am willing to wager that anyone whose life has been saved by the products of this industry could counter with just as many positive effects that this industry has had. Any system will have negative impact if used as a system of oppression and marginalization, which the monetary system definitely has. However, it’s also allowed for a greater standard of living, exchange of information and level of communication that the human race has ever seen. It has clear benefits and definite drawbacks. Personally, I’m not interested in the “goodness” or “badness” of anything, but rather showing how they affect how we think, what we believe, and how we run our lives, as well as how we’re using them and what we’re doing to ourselves.

I also get a whole lot of flak for not making art, not making the right art, making pointless art, or pretending to make art as some sort of ruse masking the scads of money I’m raking in. The comment above specifically implies that the art here is secondary to the money made, but I don’t see them as separable or things you can put in a hierarchy. This is a one-year performance for video, the purpose of which is to explore money and what it means by going through the money-making process. I think it’s interesting that the art/life line gets so blurred that I get accused of NOT making art all the time. But this is what profitism IS, marrying art and money, where they become one in the same; the moneymaking can’t exist without the artmaking in this instance, and vice vesa. It’s also interesting how often “selling out” and “buying in” come up - it keeps being proven over and over again that lots of people have a problem with art and money having such a close relationship. There’s something there that’s worth talking about and throwing into relief I think, which is how I started this whole project in the first place.

I don’t see anything further from “selling out” or “buying in” to the monetary system than attempting to step outside it, examine it, document it and put its guts on display for public consumption. Sometimes I think I’m an idiot for not “buying in” - I could be making a decent living at a job that I hated, but instead I keep putting myself through hell because I’m trying to get at a kernel of something I know is there, a little paradox that has us all duped.

Email me if you have thoughts on this, I’m interested.

I have walls to paint in the morning.