Human Factory

or, The Tao of the Prolific Artist

I’ve always butted heads with people—especially other writers—on the subject of productivity. “You’ll burn out” / “You should slow down” / “It’s good to take breaks and take care of yourself.”

Fuck that.

I’m in my element when creating. It’s the most human thing you can possibly do: have an idea, a concept, a feeling, and alchemize that into something physical to be felt, seen, and read by others. We build houses, we tinker with engines and computer towers, we 3D print gun parts, and we write books.

LA rapper 03 Greedo was facing a twenty-plus year sentence in a Texas prison, of which he’s recently been paroled out of after five years. Those five years, he was steady dropping music as if he never left. How? By all accounts from the producers and collaborators who were close with him in those days leading to lock-up, 03 Greedo got in the booth and spat bars until he’d filled the bag with literally thousands of songs to drop during his time away.

The boring take on this is that we’re socially programmed to be human factories manufacturing content assembly-line style so we don’t fade into an obscurity that is only ever days of silence away in a world addicted to the infinite feed loop. And there is of course a competitive capitalist element at play when you exist in a competitive capitalist world, which is something art industries will always be as long as money and finite attention exist. So yeah, 03 Greedo filled the bag so people wouldn’t forget who he was while he was locked up, and so his peers could keep being outdone by a man flexing off one-take freestyles.

But you don’t get a voice as soulful as 03 Greedo from a manufacturing plant. You can’t half-ass bangers like “Disco Shit.” There’s something more spiritual at play in an artist who, whether by discipline or manic muse-guided compulsion, just does not ever quit.

I’ve been taking inspiration from mangaka more than anyone lately. The manga production model, on projects that drop chapter by chapter in weekly magazines, is that something new has to drop every week. That’s at least twenty pages of conceptualizing, drawing, and writing the next part of your story in seven days, over and over again. There’s no ability to go back and edit the last chapter, because that ho already printed and selling off the racks. It’s a constant forward trajectory of improvised scenarios and real-time story development. It’s the closest written medium to freestyle rap.

Quick plug: JDO and I been experimenting with the manga model in prose form, dropping chapter by chapter of our own novels weekly on a page we’re calling Yugen Junk Weekly. Password available to Agitator Patreon subscribers.

I just want to hijack the concept of productivity from the corporate lexicon and diss lazy self-proclaimed creators. You ain’t shit if you ain’t making shit. A prolific output is emblematic of a true artist.

How bout stop taking care of yourself and go make something.