I start my mornings much like you. My lad servant Clint awakes me by peppering my blankets with lavender and rose water, while Bagrat my Georgian chambermaid, raises the venetian blinds ¼ an inch every 15 minutes. Bagrat then chooses my clothing for the day. She usually settles on an outfit that makes me look like something in between a full-time blogger and a part-time blogger. However, there is the off chance that she’ll lean towards a professional story-teller outfit, ornamented with a wearable blanket from Taos, an ocarina and an Indian feathered headress. I trust her because she has a strong background in the forced manual labor industry and this has left her a little jumpy. I appreciate this.
Chill out Bagrat.
After I arise, my lad servant Clint dismantles my stack-of-cans-by-the-door and I enter the living room where coffee is served. I then turn on the television.
One morning, I diverted from the normative news-based programming, which without failure informs me of a fire somewhere, to the more friendly choice of watching reruns of “Heathcliff” – a TV show from the early/late 1980’s.
If you have no relation to this show you have not missed much. It’s a cartoon based off of a comic strip featuring a cat. Familiar formula. It was on TV twice, once in 1980, and again in 1984. The animation was hamfisted, the plots were full of holes, and it lived in my memory as a B-List cartoon.
The A-List cartoons were the Warner Bros./Looney Tunes cartoons. Fully realized microcosms filled with great characters, great writing, and awesome animation, these cartoons served as an introduction to many aspects of the human character; love, lust, foolishness, humor and humility. Mel Blanc provided the voices for the galaxy of characters and his delivery, timing, and malleable voice talent gave breath to the drawings and personified "The Cartoon."
So imagine my surprise when I see in the credits of my morning re-run, that Mel Blanc is the voice of Heathcliff.
I had no idea! I had been living a double life inside my own life. In my mind I had drawn a line; I had separated the "good" cartoons, from the "so-so" cartoons, and never knew the heart of one was the heart of the other. Deep.
On one hand this gave me heavy boots. I thought of Mel Blanc in the winter of his life (he died in 1989) working on a schlock show. What happened to you Mel? You had it ALL! You worked on the Jack Benny Show, you had your OWN show on CBS, you were with Warner Bros. and Hanna Barbera and you defined the golden age of cartoons. Bro.
And on the other hand I referenced the gospel of the hustle. Mel Blanc kept on working on new things right up until the end. He wasn't gonna hang his hat on the Looney Tunes, he was continuously seeking new ways to engage his art, he was the hustle and there was no half-stepping.
So....
We categorize. This is good. This is bad. This is real. This is fake. This makes sense and helps us organize our allegiances to bands, brands, faith, and faces. However it blocks out the infinitely larger side of things we choose to ignore or label as not worth our time. There could be some good information in the things we label as unimportant, so it's useful for us to cast a broader net as we ensnare, collect and try to understand the moments in our life.
We as artists feel that there will be, in the future, a time when ‘mastery’ will set in. Where we won't have to take crap gigs. A future where every time we set out to achieve an artistic goal we nail it, and get awards. A future where our minds won’t be plagued with questions concerning the structure, validity, and integrity of our work. We believe that once we “arrive” we will be able to forgo the exhaustive process of struggling to bring our dreams onto the stage of reality.
The significant point in the story of Mel Blanc is that the life of an artist never "arrives." Our golden train of milk and honey and paychecks never fully stops. It might allow us to grab the rail and ride a while, but this is a train only to be ridden in the figurative sense. The real reward from working on a craft is the opportunity to familiarize yourself with the feeling of creation. And to continuously put in front of you new challenges that help you experience that feeling in new and novel ways. All the way until the end.
When asked which of his compositions he loved the most, an elderly Duke Ellington replied, "I haven't written it yet."
There is no "arrival." We keep on being the best we can be and focus on the 'here and now', because that's the only time we ever get to experience.
