IN DEMAND, OR TOO DEMANDING?
Some Thoughts about This Website
I waited many years, but I’ve now collaborated on the creation of a personal website, called “Babushkin’s Playhouse” (Babushkin being the family name from which my father’s older brothers carved out our name “Bush”). The site is a kind of museum of my creative work — books and other writings, artworks, and music — which I hope to grow into a theater of interactivity as well as a marketplace at which to sell my stuff.
There’s a degree of embarrassment involved in launching and promoting this site, because I know that my reputation as a writer and artist hovers precariously above the borderline separating people whose creative work is in demand (they have enthusiastic fans) from those who demand attention for their efforts (they have obliging friends). Embarrassed or not, however, this is how I spend many of my days: writing, creating visual art, composing and playing music, and seeking to share it all in hope that people will be moved and think well of me.
So I hover at that borderline. It is a line reinforced by all the new technologies that are enabling millions of people to express and share their creativity in ways that were once available only to people with training and social connections. I’m among those millions when it comes to visual art: Without iPhone cameras and Photoshop, I’d have created none of it.
Am I, nevertheless, a “real” artist? Can I include “artist” on my gravestone? Whenever people who are struggling with getting published have asked me if they are “real writers,” I’ve usually answered: Do you spend a lot of your spare time writing? Do you like to explore and express yourself through writing? If so, you’re a ‘real’ writer. That’s the generous thing to say. It’s the same kind of generosity that the great journalist I.F. Stone once showed to me, when I introduced myself at a conference with “Hi, I’m Larry Bush, an aspiring writer.” His reply: “Hi, I’m Izzy Stone, an aspiring writer.”
But Izzy wasn’t merely aspiring — he’d earned a large audience and a place in history.
I guess I’m less generous in my evaluations of myself than I am toward other writers and artists — or perhaps I’m egotistical enough to compare myself to high-ranking achievers rather than the unpublished ones. Yes, I have been fortunate enough to have a bunch of my books published, but most of my publishers have been minuscule outfits with no publicity resources, so my books have typically sold between 200 and 1,000 copies. And sure, I’ve had the chance, while editing Jewish Currents for nearly two decades, to see a good deal of my visual art in print (and lots of readers boosted my work with contributions that I interpreted as support for both me and the institution) — yet my work with Jewish Currents was so time-consuming that I never had the chance to pursue other, larger outlets for my creative work.
And now, at age 71, I don’t really want to be bothered trying. Instead, I’ve created my website.
There’s a third endeavor represented at the site, my music, which has been very instructive to me about creativity and ambition. I’ve been playing guitar since I’m eight years old, but I’ve never thought of myself as a professional or pursued music with the rigor that professionalism requires. For the past decade, however, and especially since my retirement four years ago, I’ve been exploring jazz, playing it a lot, and composing music and writing songs. I’ve become a much, much better guitarist than I ever was, mostly because I’m thoroughly enjoying it, so I can get into a groove instead of stumbling over my own frustrations. Rather than focusing on what I can’t do (sing like Tony Bennett, play like Buddy Guy), I’ve learned to rejoice in what I can do, in the sheer pleasure of being able to play, arrange, interpret, and sing these fabulous songs from the American Songbook. Having no professional ambitions has released me into the joy of the art itself.
Well, after all this navel-gazing, I hope you’ll explore Babushkin’s Playhouse. Maybe you’ll be moved by what you find and think well of me. Or maybe you’ll think — him again? Genug! (Enough!) •