A lapsed Buddhist, my good friend David Schoffman could never really master the reticent art of detachment.
I once rather naively proposed that together David and I could relinquish the respective authorship of our best works and cast them like foundlings upon a grateful and unsuspecting public . What, I mused, would be the consequences if we had decided to leave ambition out of the equation and allow our ideas to float autonomously without motive or yearning.
Free from desire both of treasure and renown, could we possibly stumble upon some newer and purer form of motivation?
"I'd sooner wax a camel's balls than make my art in a vacuum of obscurity," he belched, "do I look Amish to you!?"
Lack of ego has never been one of his problems.
Begrudgingly I've come to realize that David is quite right. If one were to compare the profile of your typical artist with that of the Buddha one would find a severe and irreconcilable lack of compatibility.
An artist must be a striver, a hip-checker, a narcissist, and an egomaniac. He must be nimble in his animus, fluid in his hatreds and fascistic in his intolerance of all opposing ideas. He should be an ideologue ready to pounce on his adversaries using eloquence and wit like mortal weapons. He should be an aesthetic sadist, a perverse mirror image of conventional civility and an intellectual bully quick to intimidate and verbally assault.
He should be talented, of course but also raw, de-skilled, primitive and rough. He needs to be uncompromising and didactic with an impatient air of inspired entitlement. He must be an asshole, a scumbag and above all, fatally insecure.
Fortunately, David Schoffman is all those things and worse.
An artist must be a striver, a hip-checker, a narcissist, and an egomaniac. He must be nimble in his animus, fluid in his hatreds and fascistic in his intolerance of all opposing ideas. He should be an ideologue ready to pounce on his adversaries using eloquence and wit like mortal weapons. He should be an aesthetic sadist, a perverse mirror image of conventional civility and an intellectual bully quick to intimidate and verbally assault.
He should be talented, of course but also raw, de-skilled, primitive and rough. He needs to be uncompromising and didactic with an impatient air of inspired entitlement. He must be an asshole, a scumbag and above all, fatally insecure.
Fortunately, David Schoffman is all those things and worse.
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