Why do you write or perform?

I dunno, just really curious.

if i do it for myself and no one else, it's a diary and i hate diaries.

i hate writing, by and large, so it's a constant struggle to come up with reasons why i continue to bother. "it's all i know how to do" is pretty fucking lame, but it's the best i've been able to do so far.

i always got more of an immediate charge out of being on stage, but i have no real "talent" at performing (and it falls very low on my list of worthy hobbies), except bleeding and flailing about.

I love being on stage. I love people watching/hearing me do something I feel I do pretty well. I also love the music and enjoy communicating that love to others. The physical act of singing itself has a huge centering effect on me; if I'm not in a group that sings regularly, I get very depressed and unfocused. A large part of it is "have your cake and eat it too"-ism; I'm not prepared to make the sacrifices necessary to be a full-time professional singer, but I do enough singing on the side that it could be considered a second job (some of it even results in a paycheck). I'm living out my fantasy on a smaller scale with much less financial risk.

Also, one of my singing gigs gets me on national TV every year. I'm two steps away from being famous!

Writing is really the only thing I get "job satisfaction" from. I know -- not always right away, but as soon as the just-written feeling fades -- when I've done a good job, when I could have done better, and when something fell flat. I don't do it because of a Muse, or any belief in Art-with-a-capital-A, or because I walk around being all inspired and everything. It's just what I do. Some people like cars, some people like being in a leadership position, I like making shit up.

And cause it's amusing. I don't think there's much I do, if it's avoidable, that isn't amusing :) Writing a story is playing a game.

(How gauche is it to point out that my most recent publication came out today, at Strange Horizons, the first story under Fiction? A bit gauche, I guess.)

Feedback now is mostly a way for me to gauge how effective one story is compared to another, since how much I enjoy a story is not always indicative of how the readers will feel. So although I like and depend on feedback, it isn't the undiluted ego-stroking it used to be, it's more pragmatic (in the other window, I'm talking to someone who saw an ending of mine coming, and he wasn't sure if it was supposed to be obvious or a surprise, so I'm quizzing him on exactly when he knew how it was going to go down, and whether he minded knowing.)

Also, I love infantile one-liners.

often I write because I need to to think things through, to be able to feel as if I understand them. similarly, there are other times when I write just to make explicit to myself things that I think, or to leave myself hard-to-ignore reminders of things I think are important.

I also have a very strong hope that my writing benefit others. this hope seems to be in constant tension with the tendency I seem to have acquired or been born with (even when I was publishing a fanzine in junior high school, I wrote argumentative editorials about e.g. why disney movies were bad) to try to be right. the things that I hope benefit others have a lot to do with my NOT being right about lots of things, and not trying to be right when it's not a matter of being right or not. doing that part well when I think lots of things that are in disagreement with the way lots of people think is very difficult for me sometimes, and the difficulty can obscure my goal of benefitting people. if none of this makes sense, that's probably because I'm very conflicted and don't know how to explain my attitude.

because of those goals, I much prefer a certain kind of feedback over others. when someone tells me that something I wrote made them think or question their habitual ways of thinking, or that it made them better understand or appreciate something, then I'm very happy. hearing from people who just say that I'm a good writer or that I'm smart feels nice to some extent, but with that sort of feedback I don't feel as if I learn much about whether I benefitted the reader. this is probably because I feel plenty secure about myself with respect to the latter kind of response, but I have many more doubts about the former.

Painting releases that energy for me in a big way; I have mild cyclothymia (the mildest bipolar disorder), and painting is what I do to burn off the manic phases so I can get to sleep. Helps with my insomnia, too, which might or might not be related.

The more I think about it, another big part is just that I've gone too far by now to stop, put in far too much time and effort. I simply can't imagine giving it up because it's so ingrained...I suppose I could see being in a situation where I wasn't really playing with any bands, just practicing at home and whatnot, but the important bit of music for me is doing it with other people.

I know things always look darkest just before the dawn, but right now I am really wondering at what point you should just say "this isn't fun any more" and just jack it in.

Hmm. I don't want to sound judgmental, but as soon as I read this I think: hmm. If you write a poem and finish it and read it and you don't burst into tears or are so overwhelmed by it as to laugh, or stutter, or dance then - it's not a poem. Or, rather, your standards are too low. [NOTE: Jerry the Nipper, IGNORE IGNORE IGNORE, esp. for the purposes of this post, haha].

Me, I could justify this a thousand ways, or I could turn the question around and say, we all play when we're kids, why on earth would we stop when we grow up? I could also agree with Freud, and I could also say that 'the world is not enough'. Just walking round the streets you get a very shabby idea of how humans relate to one another (some in cars, some in blankets, all hurring off to get somewhere else -- 'a picture of dissatisfaction', as Kafka once said). It's only in books, concert halls, gallery spaces that you really get a glimpse of true human potentiality, and our possible future in a world where art (as compensation) will no longer be necessary and will wither away, because life will be pure play and pure song. (Weeps.)

(Pulls self together). Of course, the 'honkey donkey' look-ma-no-hands element counts for a lot too. Look at me. But this selfish 'look at me' leads, in anybody realistic and generous, to an unselfish 'Oh my God, look at what he just did, that's incredible, and I know, because I've tried it.' Narcissism, in other words, can be the root of admiration. Being a performer also makes you the best audience.

Why I asked the question in the first place, was because I was thinking that perhaps my reasons for writing or performing weren't good enough, that they were too superficial and shallow and that ultimately, in the absence of motivation of any 'real' substance, I would be doomed to failure.

The more I thought about it, the more I realised that this was not necessarily true. Yes, we all write and perform for lots of different reasons, but I believe that like life itself, these reasons are constantly evolving and changing. So it's quite possible that my main attention-seeking focus will level out or be replaced by some other driving force in the future. At the very least, I suspect it will be balanced by a more inward-looking tendency that will help give my work a more well-rounded perspective.

More specifically, I write my diary as a way of Marking Time, to avoid Time Marking Me.

Though I can't deny it helps if I'm getting paid.

Change that to "acclaim, status and the love of Dirty Rock Boys" and you've got a snapshot of my motivations, har har.

In retrospect, now that I've rested, I realise that it's because I'd have blown my head off years ago if I didn't have this outlet. Unforunately, it's when the outlet that formerly prevented you from blowing your head off BECOMES another pressure that makes you want to blow your head off, then this leads to problems. This used to be my release from stress. Now it IS stress.