Scruffy
In my conversation with documentarian Scott Crawford for our feature a few weeks ago, we talked a lot about the DIY ethic of the punk and indie rock scenes, particularly in the 1980s as that’s the time he and I grew up in.
In the pre-internet era, our exposure to music from other local scenes was limited to college radio, select magazines, word of mouth and, for a suburban kid like me, MTV’s 120 Minutes.
For punk and indie rock, everything was DIY. The recordings, the distribution, the venues, the record art, merch… everything. Most of these artists were not much more than kids themselves, and the stuff they did themselves was rough around the edges. It fit the ethic and aesthetic of torn jeans and thrift store clothes, homemade tattoos and haircuts, Sharpie-adorned jean jackets and Converse All-Stars.
There was no infrastructure for these scenes, so they were built as we went. And there was no social media presence to homogenize the look and sound of the movement, so each local scene was in many ways its own ecosystem. With limited home computing capacity, ’zines and posters were made by hand and reproduced on black-and-white Xerox machines from collages and original art.
Today, we live in a considerably more genteel (gentrified?) world when it comes to doing it ourselves. With the ability to make a graphic on my phone in minutes and immediately share it with the world, I have a considerable leg-up on the guy who made band posters on the office copy machine when nobody was looking — bumping up the brightness to cover up the lines where I’d taped letters and pictures together.
The average social media influencer, with their gazillion followers and #ad posts about the great probiotics and $300 jeans and boutique curated healing crystals they get for free have more design capacity at their fingertips than generations of people before them.
We live in a time where it is very easy to be incredibly polished, and in which we are expected to be incredibly polished. Independent bands can make gorgeous records anywhere, designers create photorealistic renderings, wedding videos now have trailers, and we “curate” our social media and professional identities to position ourselves in the best light. Everything is polished to a glorious plastic gloss.
The increasing need to seem polished, professional and financially successful feeds on the insecurity and the creeping, insidious feelings of inadequacy that many artists struggle with. When non-artists (and “content creators” whatever those are) can create beautiful, if unoriginal, images nearly instantly to advertise the latest brunch menu, then the level of expectation for polish is high indeed.
Music and film technology have advanced to levels of sophistication and affordability that it seems criminal to put out even an EP or short film that doesn’t seem to have a million-dollar budget. The actual output of painters, writers and creators of physical art isn’t necessarily under pressure to be glossy, but it does require an online presence. And people want that presence to look like their perception of “professional.”
Where, in the quest to be polished, do we place truth? A musician friend of mine once said of a certain band, “they’re not saying anything, but they sound like they are.” Is this where easy access to the appearance of high-concept creation goes? The intersection of beautiful and meaningless?
With the one-two punch of COVID-19 and national protests against institutional racism, Americans find themselves cooped up at home, battling illness and sweating it out on the streets. We’re consumed with concerns of greater import than whether our work looks or sounds glossy enough.
This moment is truly unprecedented, and unprecedented moments have no built-in infrastructure. They have no expectation, no model, no predefined aesthetic or ideal. It has to be build from within — just like those DIY punk and indie scenes, just like skater culture and hip-hop culture, just like any true, organic movement of people who lead with their values.
This is the time for being unpolished. The time to rebel against the gloss, the filter, the slick poster or austere portfolio site. This is the moments to remember what it’s like to get glue on your hands, to draw imperfect lines, to make an album on a handheld recorder in your bedroom, to shoot a documentary with your phone in the street.
This is the time to reject the false expectations of perfectionism. To put substance before style, and message before marketing. Be scruffy. Be audacious, lo-fi and gritty if you want.
The expectation to look and sound perfect can be as exclusionary as any unsound practice. This is the time to live truthfully and work truthfully. If your truth, your message, lives best when highly polished, smooth and gleaming, then polish away. If your truth is sweaty and chipped, frayed at the seams or not so pretty, own it. Lead with your values and vision, and the rest will fall into place.
Need help defining your voice or reaching your audience? Give me a shout. I offer consulting and services for all kinds of individual artists and arts organizations.
