There's a bit in Robert Rodriguez's interview with Quentin Tarantino where Tarantino admits to being affected by how much of a commercial flop GRINDHOUSE turned out to be, and goes on to laugh about how Rodriguez doubled down and proceeded to come out with MACHETE and MACHETE KILLS.
Despite publication difficulties faced by THE SOLAR GRID, there's a part of me that would love to follow the Rodriquez method and double down and go on to make a series of short graphic novellas set in the world of THE SOLAR GRID anyway. Because you gotta admit, that would be kinda badass.
And if that doesn't shake away the whole “street-artist of the Egyptian revolution” thing that's become so intertwined with my reputation, I'm not exactly sure what else would.
#radar #journal
Dresden presentation in the can. Accounting taken care of. Laundry done. Inbox 0, RSS 0.
I can now spend the next couple of days tending to house things before boarding my flight with little worry.
From Ahmed Naji's latest:
“There is a legend about Abu Nuwas. He went to a master and asked to be taught. The master told him to go and memorize a thousand lines of poetry. He spent a year doing it, then returned. The master said: 'Good. Now forget them. If you can, you will be a poet.'”
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Lords save me from this nonsense.
Many don't know this, but I never went to art school. Much to my misery, I actually ended up in business school (long story). Though not a very good one.
One of things I was most looking forward to upon graduating was pursuing art and design full time and never having to look at anything even remotely close to a ledger ever again.
How naive.
In other news, I keep coming up against hurdles in regard to finding an appropriate publication pathway for the collected edition of THE SOLAR GRID. While almost every editor I send it to does make it a point to acknowledge the book's merits; “a project of immense passion”, “unique”, “graphically sophisticated”, it still gets turned down for one reason or another:
- “Not mainstream enough”, according to one well-positioned agent.
- “Not interested in anything dystopian anymore” said the much-respected editor at a major publishing house.
- “Too big” according to another major publisher.
- “Not quite for us”.
And then there are the few odd correspondences where a publisher would express initial interest and then ghost you. I realize of course that rejection stories aren't cool to divulge unless you have a success story to go with (at which point, rejection stories become extra extra cool), but I don't think of this blog as a space to project any kind of awfully considered persona. I like to say it like it is, likely to my own detriment.
Two more days till I'm off to Dresden and there is just so much to do that I'd rather not have to do.
#journal #tsg
Lots of boring accounting and excel sheets today.
But made a little somethin' somethin' for my special lady, which brought me much joy:
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Random thought: The whole simulation theory thing that seems to be increasingly trendy these days actually isn't at all at odds with any of the traditional religious beliefs of old, the ones that imagined god as an anthropomorphized king on a throne in the clouds. Because simulation theory by definition implies the entire universe being created by someone somewhere. The anthropomorphized king in this case being a computer programmer. The throne: an ergonomic chair. Which, if you think about it, just so happens to be this decade's flavor of king.
#radar #journal
Did a fun collab with Dominic Boyer for the delightfully demented Elon Magazine, which I should be able to tease soon.
Tomorrow I prepare my Dresden presentation and take care of some admin.
Season 1 and 2 of SILO were good. Season 3 is frustratingly dumb because the main character now has amnesia and we follow her unravel the shocking mystery of what happened to her over the last two seasons, which we, as viewers, already know.
34°C and sauna-level humid and the lack of AC in the studio is proving to be lethal despite all attempts at overt nudity.
Inbox 464, RSS 0.
#journal #work
For the record, the only agents I have representing my work are Booklyn; who focus on placing reasonably-sized art-on-paper at institutional collections, especially within the U.S. They've been instrumental in getting my work into a number of university collections (listed here).
No art-dealer for larger works, no literary agent, and certainly no film/TV agent. Most of my dealings have been conducted as a “free agent” so to speak, which, quite frankly, I would like to change, because I am now spent af.
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The latest newsletter finally went out. This is issue #235: Can't Stop Won't Stop.
As always, sign up lives here.
Recently, I had to turn down working with a novelist I admire. He had a fantastic idea for a graphic novel; an exhilarating historical epic that would need at least 500 pages to unfold and probably another 10 years of my life to make. Mind-blowing and attractive as the concept was, I am sadly way too burnt out after THE SOLAR GRID to plunge into anything that elaborate anytime soon.
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Two days without showing up was very unlike her. In fact, just the sound of the door to the garden sliding open every morning would be enough for her to come running.
Suspicious, I decided to go look for her up and down the street, but I didn't need to look far. Right out front, I found her corpse. Next to a small piece of crunched up aluminum foil. Whatever was inside it, gone. Someone poisoned the cat.
I grabbed her and was surprised to find she was already stiff as a rock.
I carried her down to the garden, and buried her. A shuffle in the bamboo a few feet away betrayed her kittens, who were watching.
Her name was Koshary, and she was a very sweet girl.
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One of the surest ways to infuse my life with misery is to sit me in front of a computer screen for multiple hours on end. Unfortunately for me, this past week has been mostly that, and the next week will likely entail more of the same. Some days I find myself clocking in something like 12 hours straight at the computer. Needless to say, this is not the life of the artist one aspired to as a child, but it is exactly what the job necessitates (at least for me I guess) in this evidently despicable century of human existence. Most of these hours don't actually involve doing much in the way of anything creative.
– TSG Exhibition: The ask included proposing objects that can be pulled from the world of THE SOLAR GRID; objects that could potentially be fabricated and displayed within an exhibition setting. This meant going through the entire now complete graphic novel with a particular eye for the speculative objects that could ostensibly work, making note of them, and putting them all into a presentable proposal-ready PDF.
– The Podcast Series: Going over the video recordings of the episodes (wherein I interview Egyptian artists), each one an hour long, and identifying the moments in which the guest talks about a particular project. Make a list of all mentioned projects, email it to the guest so they can send back relevant imagery of said projects. Once received, email them to the video editor along with time-stamps that indicate where the images ought to be spliced in.
-TSG Archive: Two things have necessitated going through my very unorganized history of TSG process documentation. And y'know, TSG took 10 years to complete, so that's a hell of a lot of unorganized history to go through. Which is how I stumbled upon this:
Giving a keynote presentation about THE SOLAR GRID at the Science Fiction Research Association conference held in Oslo circa 2022. Photo credit: lost (I'm so sorry!)
Of course, the above-mentioned projects haven't been the only reason behind recent computer-centric activities. There's also the usual stuff: email, accounting, flight bookings, etc.
My one piece of advice to young artists from here on out with be: Just know that it'll involve something like 70% admin, 20% actual creative work, and 10% putting out fires and/or wanting to die.
#journal #work #tsg