thuviaptarth | (no subject)

I don't know what to do with myself now that I don't have a vid to go home to every night. Yuletide just isn't the same. Clearly, the thing to do is to start another vid. I have reviewed the source for random fandom #1 and decided I don't want to vid it after all, and started reviewing the source for random fandom #2 and decided I still like that vid idea. And I edited the audio. Editing hip hop is SO MUCH EASIER than editing alternative rock, guys! All my vid songs should be hip hop songs! Sadly, my imaginary vids playlist does not agree.

I am not as psyched about random fandom #2 vid as I was about "Low Red Moon," but I expect I will get pulled in when I am vidding, or anyhow that's how it works with writing. Mostly I am excited about Buffy plans (but I need to rewatch the series first) and Sarah Connor Chronicles plans (but I will wait for hiatus because trying to vid a show with canon that changes every week is too scary). It is so intimidating to think about vidding Buffy -- there's so much canon, and so many of the vids I imprinted on way back when were Buffy vids. I'm afraid everything I do will have other people's fingerprints all over it. I am afraid of that with Supernatural, too; in some ways, it was much, much easier to vid Ruby than it would have been to vid Sam or Dean. (And in other ways it was much, much harder. I could write an essay on how the visual narrative undercut half of what the dialog tried to establish about Ruby, if I thought anyone would care.) Even with a focus on Ruby, it was impossible to avoid using clips I've seen used dozens of times before.

I think there may be around three people in the world who care about random fandom #2 -- it's a Yuletide perenniel -- but fortunately I am pretty sure I can rope in at least one of them for beta.

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::laugh:: You do keep telling me that! But my point is, I am by god gonna keep making what I like no matter what. I'm just *observing* that there may be audience-related repercussions. I'm okay with that. But I think it's interesting and worthy of discussion and stuff. (:

Yes, but I do not feel your observations are borne out by the evidence, which is to say that despite your conviction you're losing audience, people continue to love--and new people come to love--the new vids you're doing. ;)

Worrying about audience may be a waste of time, but it's a waste I can't help committing. I'll try to chalk it up to emotional prep work, like rewatching episodes. Like any pain or anxiety, I need to acknowledge it so I can ignore it.

I have vague thoughts about anxieties of influence and romantic delusions of solitary authorship and how embarassed I am to admit to them but how thoroughly they affect me, but wow, even I don't care, so I will refrain from articulating them.

I wish there was a way to get conclusive evidence without seeming like the world's biggest egotist. (:

I'll try to chalk it up to emotional prep work, like rewatching episodes. Like any pain or anxiety, I need to acknowledge it so I can ignore it.

Seems like a pretty sound strategy, actually.

I have vague thoughts about anxieties of influence and romantic delusions of solitary authorship and how embarassed I am to admit to them but how thoroughly they affect me, but wow, even I don't care, so I will refrain from articulating them.

Well, I won't try and talk you into it, but I am interested, should you ever decide to write it up. (:

Oh, it's just overvaluing (some kinds of) originality in art and seeing art as the expression of the artist's unique snowflake soul instead of seeing it as the intersection of individuality and culture.

I like thinking of myself as a unique snowflake soul, but who doesn't?

I'm interested in the distinction you're making between originality and individuality. I recognize that the relevant point here is the word "intersection", but I'm still curious for more clarification.

Am I making a distinction between originality and individuality? I hadn't thought so, but you may be right.

I'll try to uncompress -- sorry if I'm saying things you already know. Harold Bloom has this theory, "the anxiety of influence," that great poets are afraid of the influence/interference of other people on their work, especially their poetic forefathers, and that they cope by misprision, by deliberately or semi-deliberately misreading earlier work in order to create something new. The poetic son must misread/kill the poetic father in order to become king/create new work. Very Freudian, but also very Romantic with a capital R, because it comes out of the Romantic conviction that art is the pure expression of individuality and is best when it is closest to nature and farthest from the polluting influences of society.

And intellectually I know this is bullshit, and furthermore link the whole set of theories to a a particular social structure that's damaging to women, and also people of color and colonized peoples, anyone on the wrong side of a power divide. What gets defined as "natural" and who has the time, money, freedom, and social support to do the work of "solitary" genius are all defined by the existing social order, as is what gets recognized as "genius", "original", or "derivative". One of the things I like about fandom is that it not only recognizes, it depends upon, the community and collaborative underpinnings of individual works of art, at least for fans; I wish more people were willing to make the same realization about the professional work we organize around, but I do think more people are getting there.

At the same time, I have this emotional longing to do something really special and unique that no one else could do. And that's not really useful, because it's not about the work. It's about me. It's just ego.

I'm used to it with writing, and I'll get used to it with vidding. It's just easier to deal with for writing because with writing I know what I'm doing.

Like, right now I am trying to quash a vidbunny because it's not *different* enough -- it's too close to a recent vid, and it's too close to "Low Red Moon": it's Supernatural, and it's non-human POV, and it's probably going to use some of the techniques that I figured out in "Low Red Moon," and also I'm not 100% convinced I can make the bizarre song choice work. I wanted to do something different from my second vid. Different fandom, different focus, different techniques -- I wanted to learn something new, flex some other muscles, do something my friends who don't watch SPN could appreciate better or at least differently.

But as you can tell by the past tense I'm about giving up on the fight. Another weird non-human POV with Biblical imagery coming up. Please let this one not take 6 months.

I have this emotional longing to do something really special and unique that no one else could do.

I guess I think that we all make something really special and unique that no one else could do, every time we make art. Your second weird non-human POV with Biblical imagery SPN vid is not only going to be different from your first one, it's going to be different from any weird non-human POV with Biblical imagery SPN vid that anyone else would make -- because they'd make it their way, and not your way.

I see what you're getting at about the wrongth of the quest for originality as defined by poets, Romantics, Freud, etc. The power problems are inherent in art as it exists under the patriarchy. But I don't see anything wrong with wanting your work to be new and different; it may not be useful to you to have that as a motivating force, but I guarantee you it's useful to me. Maybe it's ego, and maybe it's just what gets me into my vidding chair, but whatever it is, it works.

Maybe the striving for special snowflakitude is bad, but I believe that we are unique, and that the things we make will be defined by our particular qualities, even as I believe that all art is essentially collaborative and inextricably enmeshed with the culture from which it springs.

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