Every time I sit down to write, I’m doing it for now. For you, the reader. I’d like my work to survive, but that’s not what’s driving me. What I want is for it to be in the conversation, in the always-changing now. That’s why I write every week. My wife, Roberta, says that “writing weekly is like performing on stage.” The work we do is written in heat and published at once. That kind of immediacy is focusing, it’s energizing, it goads you on. And it keeps us moving. And humble.
If you think that all art should be like High Renaissance painting, or like van Gogh, Eva Hesse, or Basquiat, think again. Human beings are hardwired to crave change. The universe is expanding; so are we, and so is art. Which doesn’t mean it’s getting better, or worse, only that all art was once contemporary art, in conversation with its time. Yours is, too.
Every choice you make—your medium, processes, colors, shapes, and images—should serve not nostalgia, but your visceral present. You are an artist of modern life. That personal, specific urgency is what fuels every successful work of art.