Pulls both ways, dawg. Presume this is your clique, for better or worse. Either they raise you up, you raise them up, or you pull yourself out of the muck and regrettably watch them sink. One of my seminal moments was reconnecting with an ex-girlfriend - the one I thought could be "the one" - and realizing that her life was so fucked up, and that I had so little influence over her, that any attempt to improve her lot would pull me down with her. That's about where I realized my massively codependent tendencies. Joke was on me - she ended up working for a bank, marrying her high school fling and having a baby. I don't know much beyond that because I stopped caring. I'd found people who appreciated my input, enjoyed my company and wanted to do something with their lives. It's interesting that you inject the word "competitiveness" into the conversation. That's not at all what I'm talking about. If one of your "art kids" said "I'm not going to college, college is for squares" (snaps fingers daddy-o) then the other "art kids" have to decide where they are in relation to that sentiment because if they were thinking of going to college? They're squares now. It isn't about one-upmanship, it's about shared values. If you wish to succeed, and they wish to share your values, they will also wish to succeed. If you wish to succeed, and they do not wish to succeed, they no longer share your values. And 23 is a good time to shed people who no longer shed your values.
I'm a big fan of Patrick Nagel. Between Nagel and The Memphis Group it's about as '80s as you can go, for better or worse. Do I need to own any? Fuck to the no. But Nagel was an artist. Also a big fan of Yves Klein, obviously. Dadaist mutherfucker of the first degree. Sold out a gallery opening with nothing in it, created paint, painted everything and sold it to rich people, shot a superposition of himself jumping off a building to argue that NASA was wasting their time. Thing is, though, Yves Klein died of a heart attack at 34. Congenital? Probably not. Nagel, for his part: Against his parents' wishes and through no direction attributable to him, Patrick Nagel was cremated and his ashes scattered over the Pacific Ocean, I mean, it's one thing to die in '84 of a heart attack at a 15-minute "aerobathon." It's quite another to die in the damn parking lot of an aerobathon and then get cremated before anyone can second-guess the autopsy. This is how artists die and we WORSHIP them for it. Picasso? Lived forever and grew to be hated by his peers for selling out. If you want to seal your legacy best check out early so they can never see you settle into making a living. I wrote - and sold - a screenplay about art and artists. I think the line that sold it was "Van Gogh? Fucking failure. Dead Van Gogh? Legend." When you can name-check Yves Klein in one hand and Thomas Kinkade in the other and have someone pay you to do it you're speaking to the frustrated artist in all of us. I worked with a shitty bar band. Sold out every weekend playing crap reggae and soca covers. Was talking to the bassist and the drummer between sets and they rolled up their sleeves to show their matching Einsturzende Neubauten tattoos. You gotta make art but you gotta eat too so there you are, playing "No Woman No Cry" for the eighth time that week while daydreaming about banging shopping carts around inside a water tank. If you can't outperform your idols, outlive them.
In 1984, at the age of 38, Nagel participated in a 15-minute celebrity "aerobathon" to raise funds for the American Heart Association. After much confusion and wondering of his whereabouts, he was found dead in his car outside the aerobics studio having suffered a myocardial infarction. A further autopsy revealed that Nagel had a congenital heart defect that went undetected his entire life.