The title of this post is going to annoy, anger, and bruise some egos. Considering how little I post, not something I’m going to lose a second of sleep over. But this essay or rant’s been brewing for a minute, so I figure it’s time to let it out.

I am shit. A simple sentence. But it’s true, it the most literal sense. We all are crap eventually. We can preserve part of it, roast it into a fine powder even. But even in those processes, part of us goes into the can, or down the drain. As a culture and society, we turn a blind eye to it, unless you work in an industry that deals directly with it.  We flush, we toss, then we wash our hands and walk away.

As much as I could do an entire post on our relationship with those natural processes, I’m talking in a metaphorical sense today. I’m talking about art. Whether you’re a dancer, writer, artist, or musician, you’re all shit. At least 99.9 percent of you are.

I can feel the hate coming from here, but I stand by my words. I’m famous for saying that 95 percent of any art form is garbage, I used to say that in a condescending manner, my music or movie snobbishness at a high when I did.

Most people will read those words and think I mean them in the negative. And they’ll agree. Some will even name names. And like I used to be they’ll be dead fucking wrong in their usage.

My road to this conclusion began with a magazine. It’s called Razorcake, and it’s the best DIY punk rock magazine out there. They’re awesome, and I’ve been subscribing for years. Back in issue 125, their editor wrote a column about art and permanence. It shook me to the core and made me rethink my assumptions.

Here’s an assumption many in the arts make: my work is rock. It must be rock. It must stand for the ages, it has to mean something, it has to matter for eternity. Like most assumptions, it’s mostly wrong, and I’ll tell you why.

You’re not Stephen King. Your band is not Metallica, and your choreography is not Alvin Ailey. For most folks, this is true, and will remain so. And for many, that idea, that your work won’t be famous, or last, is what scares them to the core. It drives them into a frenzy of perfectionism, depression, and egomania. All of which are enemies of creativity.

I want this idea to go die in a tire fire. I wish society would stop setting this as the goal. Most real professionals don’t have that as the goal. They aren’t going to turn it down, but most of them know that isn’t likely.

Which is why I want to have creatives say to each other: I am shit. Why? Because the ego kills creativity. Because it stops art and joy dead in its tracks. And because shit is good. Shit is needed. Shit makes things grow. You need dirt to grow things, right? Dirt ain’t nothing but dead things and insect shit.

So come on down, dear reader. Bring your art, your music, your dancing. Because it’s needed, now more than ever. Our success driven culture makes it seem that unless you’re number one, you are nothing. Number two is bad, in so many ways. But society is wrong. We need that stuff to add to the pot, to the soup of what makes us all human.

If the last year has taught me anything, it is that nothing lasts. My father passed. My family moved out of the only home my youngest daughter has ever known. But even when people die, and we move, we bring part of them with us. And that is the shit.

I’m leaving you today with a quote from the Razorcake article, which sums up what I’m trying to say in a less shitty fashion.

“Perhaps the best thing creative work can do is to compost into the soil, so that unremembered, it becomes the food of a new era, or rather, devoured, digested, the very consciousness of that era. Marble lasts, but soil feeds”-Rebecca Solnit in Recollections of My Nonexistence.