David Davis 41, part 3
on your audience
In a 2002 conversation between John Berger and Michael Ondaatje, the writers consider the creative process. Ondaatje says that in order to work he sometimes needs to “escape that place where you are very conscious of the audience.” The great Berger, holding his own hands like a happy saint, investigates.
Berger: Are you withdrawing to yourself or to somewhere else? Tell me about the place where you find yourself when you withdraw. Is it here? Is it there?
Ondaatje: I don’t think it’s withdrawing. It’s more like descending, in the sense that I’m trying to descend to a level that I haven’t gone before. If I began to write something that I already knew, it would be a problem for me. I’m trying to accept the given of what I know and then write something that I don’t know. And that’s why that privacy, that secrecy, which I’m obsessed with, is necessary. It becomes discovery as opposed to clarification.
Have you, as a writer, visited this place before? A place that, despite hopefully producing written work, is nonverbal, even sublingual? That is extraconscious, metaphysical, spiritual? That is both communicative (communal) and private (exclusive)? (Instinct, said Proust, is that which makes art “the most real of all things, the most austere school of life, the true last judgment.”) And are you excited, as Berger is, to regard another artist’s experience of this place? His acknowledgement of Ondaatje’s descent to an inaccessible place is a gift to his colleague, and the opportunity to watch him do so, another gift.
Few things are more creatively energizing than the generosity on display between Berger and Ondaatje, which is why I recommend watching the conversation in full, even if you’re unfamiliar with both writers. The warmth between them, artist to artist, is palpable, invigorating. I’m not a Ondaatje fan, but I don’t need to be to feel the mutual esteem and appreciation. I think I might like all artists, though I know I don’t like all art. Sometimes I’m moved by a work of art and sometimes I’m moved by the artist that produced it; in this latter sense, the art is almost negligible.
Is that wrong? It’s how I feel, at any rate1. If it matters, what I think (which here mirrors how I feel) is that artist is a sensibility. It’s a way of seeing, doing, feeling, reckoning, connecting. Being a sensibility, artistry is distinct from commerce. Though it can be capitalized upon, it cannot be measured by, say, books sold or dollars earned. For these reasons, an artist need not be economically viable. An artist need not be recognized in their time. An artist need not be successful, or even not fail. They need only to be encountered.
Audience is not just who you’re writing for (or who you’re momentarily evading). Audience is also a marketing term for the group of consumers for whom a given product is intended.
When I was being interviewed about my book, X, during its launch last year, I got asked about audience a lot: Who is this book for? As questions go, it’s not unfair, but neither is the answer that I usually wanted to give, which was: Me. I knew, however, that simple as this question sounds, it’s not a straightforward one. Who is this book for? There’s an honest answer, a PR answer (for other trans people, for other dykes, for anyone who’s ever felt like an outsider!), and a business answer (non-binary readers between the ages of 18-35, enjoyers of erotica or noir, or, hey, just go check out my Good Reads tags, which lists my book’s genre as transgender, just like me!)2. If a writer is savvy enough to combine the three answers—if they’re even distinct from each other, that is—they may leave the title of writer behind for one with even more earning power: influencer.
I began this series asking, Why do we write? Knowing for whom we write can surely help guide us toward our answer. Perhaps it even is our answer. But these days especially, knowing your audience can also contribute to an existential crisis of the distinctly writerly kind: if you know for whom you write, you’re better equipped to make money off the writing. Some worms can’t be put back in the can.
I’m not saying that the commercialization of art isn’t old as hell, that the dueling compulsions of artistic integrity and making rent don’t dance on our roofs like hot-footing demons. But as it becomes harder and harder to make a living as a writer of, say, fiction3, these considerations become more pertinent to our creative choices. They weigh on them, in fact. Added to the pressure to create ~authentically~ is the pressure to professionalize, both of which are fake problems with very real material consequences. Commodified authenticity is big bucks. Professionalization is job security. Luckily, whole industries—from MFA programs to pay-to-play writing competitions—have popped up to address them, draining the time, money, and energy of aspiring writers looking for a foot in the door.
And so I leave you with a craft exercise, if that’s something you can use. It’s corny, in the way that craft exercises can be, but if you’re having trouble making that descent, maybe it’s a way in: the next time you begin a project, write it as if the only name on the dedication page is your own.
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“Deal with your shit, this is literature.”—Dennis Cooper
“I don’t make political art. I don’t make feminist art. I’m a woman who’s a feminist. I don’t make women’s art. I think those categories marginalize anyone’s work. I’m engaged with ideas of power and picturing, of pleasure and punishment, of lives and their beginnings and ends, and how, amid moments of pleasure and tenderness, there are explosions of destruction, subjugation, and the insanity of war.”—Barbara Kruger
Which I don’t. She has a day job! On top of this newsletter. So, subscribe! I love $5!