Seth Godin on Art and Writing

Excellent Tyler Cowen interview with Seth Godin. The first section is about marketing, not my thing, but from there they go on to all sorts of interesting stuff. Loved this exchange on modern art.

GODIN: As I mentioned, I grew up in Buffalo. My mom was the first woman on the board of the Albright-Knox. The Albright-Knox is a —

COWEN: A great museum.

GODIN: Great museum, one of the most important contemporary art museums in the country. You walk into the Clyfford Still room, and you see magic. You see Jasper Johns or Andy Warhol. You see what happened when we started to separate craft from art in the post-photography world. All of that is real.

What is not real is how much paintings cost at auction. How much paintings cost at auction is a by-product of half money laundering and half speculation. It is a by-product of what do you think is going to go up in value tomorrow, not what is good art. People who love art tend to understand the difference between the two, the same way a company can still be a good company and their stock price might not go up.

COWEN: How has immersing yourself in the visual arts improved the other things you do, other than the obvious, “Oh, I try to have my work look nice”?

GODIN: Oh, it has nothing to do with making my work look nice. It’s about the liminal space between here and there. The best audiobook ever recorded is Just Kids by Patti Smith. It’s not about Patti Smith the rockstar; it’s about Patti Smith on a journey from someplace that’s sort of safe to someplace that’s important. When I see artists — whether it’s Miles Davis or Herbie Hancock or Shepard Fairey — do that, that’s what I want. That is what gets me out of bed in the morning.

I am not trying to build companies and make a profit. I’m trying to feel that feeling again of, “Did I do something generative where I explored a liminal space between here and there?” The coolest thing about contemporary art is you can feel that feeling in three seconds if you’re in the right place at the right time, whereas it takes much longer when you’re reading a book. 

And this on writing:

The short version is, publishing is not a business; publishing is an organized hobby.

And there are things in book publishing that are metrics that appear real that aren’t actually useful. So, the first step is to ignore the useless metrics. The New York Times Best Seller List is a fraud. It is not based on actual fact. Don’t bend your life out of proportion to show up on a list that doesn’t make any sense.

But beyond that, why are you writing the book? Who are you writing the book for? What change do you seek to make? Writing a book is a magical thing. It will make you better. Everyone should write one.

Publishing a book is a totally different project, and most people shouldn’t publish their book. Maybe they should just give it away. The shortest version of the advice is — particularly if it’s a novel — take your first novel, post it on the internet for free, send it to 50 friends. If it spreads, if other people want to read it, your second novel will get published, but if your first novel doesn’t spread when it’s free, you probably need to write a better novel.

At this point I think I should just have given The Raven and the Crown away online. Still angling for a way to do that with an audiobook. I would record it myself but it really needs a woman with some kind of British accent. Perhaps AI will be able to do that for me soon.