I hate your art because you asked me to hate it.

I was talking about Dave Eggers with some friends the other day.

“I hate people who hate Dave Eggers,” said the woman.
“I hate Dave Eggers!” I said.
“Well, I don’t hate you. But it’s so trendy to hate Dave Eggers now.”
“Hmm, if it’s trendy to hate Dave Eggers I may have to start liking him. But I read A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, and I was just like, ‘Fuck you, Dave.’ I really hated him.”
“He writes himself as pretty unlikeable,” said the guy.
“And I oblige him by hating him. I follow his lead. If Dave Eggers asks me to hate him, I’m happy to do so.”

They laughed, and we talked about other things. But I’ve been thinking about  art, and how willing I am to take the artist at their action. If you make some arty film where you focus on just say, the actor’s hands for forty seconds, or close-ups of their mouth, if you use colour schemes that make people uncomfortable, I will oblige you by being annoyed and fidgety and eventually angry.   If I figure that you’ve done this to make some point (or to use the emotions you’re generating) then I’ll accept it, but if not?  I will not shout your brilliance to the hills because I’m intimidated and afraid of looking gauche; I will talk about how your project sucks in some detail and at length, because you will have led me to be aggravated by foisting garbage on me that you know will aggravate. The conventions of a polite society demand, in fact, that I pretty much hate Dave Eggers (well, that one book, anyway) and a lot of other artists’ work, just to oblige them for trying so damned hard to elicit that reaction from me.

Sometimes it’s just incompetence, which I’ll dislike, but a lot of the time artists do it on purpose to be “edgy,” which is Artworld Patois for “I don’t have any ideas but I really want to get laid.”

On the other end of the spectrum, I have the same reaction with formulaic artmaking. “Oh look,” my brain will say “there’s that same standard editing sequence for the fortieth time in this film. Zzzzzz.” And after hearing all 6 chords that the lead guitarist can play in many standard variations, my brain grows weary.   Repeated patterns are great for wallpaper, not so great for art.  I understand that new artists need practice, and that some of that practice has to take place in a public forum where there are people watching.  But I’ve done my time listening to bands who don’t remember to tune and watching films no one bothered to light.   I leave it in the capable hands of the uncritical or the easily amused.  Or the artists’ girlfriends.

In some ways I’m the ideal audience, for artists that want to move forward; I’ve an unbridled contempt for bafflingly arty crap, and a certainty that if I didn’t get it, there probably wasn’t anything to get. I mean, of course I’ve walked away from movies feeling like I’ve been hit by a bomb, dazed and spinning, but taking your time to come to grips with some ideas is a completely different thing than finding it un-relatable or obtuse.   I like to be challenged and stretched and surprised, and some filmmakers can take those conventionally aggravating things and make them speak a language that their audience can find meaning in.  Some can take those familiar 4 chords and turn out some breathtaking piece of music.  That’s experience, that’s knowing your medium and your tools.   But if you’re toying with me, or throwing things together just for the sake of reaction and provocation instead of something with a little more weight and depth (not to mention skill), I’ll file you under ‘jerkface’ with the rest of the artists who ask me to hate their work.

But if I hate something and you ask, especially if you ask over a drink, I’ll tell you in detail why the thing I just watched or heard didn’t work, and what the artist did that screwed it. And I’m willing to admit that sometimes I just don’t like a thing, and there was nothing really wrong with it except that it didn’t appeal to me.

Merlin Mann exhorts us to go ahead and make things, rather than worrying about waiting until conditions are perfect; I agree with him, but I go a step further and say that you should go ahead and make things when you’re not ready, when you’re imperfect, when you’re going to make a lot of mistakes and fail.  But while you’re failing, ask the people who react most strongly why it’s failing – I promise a more useful answer than all the supportive best friends in the whole world.  Because the most useful action you can take as an artist – and the one I am most likely to judge you for – is the action of soliciting (or avoiding) honest feedback.  I know it’s the hardest thing, and I’m rubbish at it myself, but I’m trying.