Sticky Notes - The marvelous squiggles of Vonnegut.

May 31, 2023 | Read Online

The marvelous squiggles of Vonnegut

Why being good at things isn't always the point in doing them

Cole Schafer
May 31, 2023

When Kurt Vonnegut was fifteen, he spent a month or so working on an archeological dig.

One day over lunch, an archeologist was bombarding him with all the typical getting to know you questions…

“What sports do you play?”

Vonnegut told the archeologist that while he didn’t play any sports he was in theater, choir, played violin, piano and used to take art classes.

The archeologist was impressed.

“Wow. That’s amazing!”

Perplexed by the praise, Vonnegut backpedaled.

“Oh no, but I’m not any good at ANY of them.”

Seeing the young Vonnegut’s wavering confidence, the archeologist spoke up.

“I don’t think being good at things is the point of doing them. I think you’ve got all these wonderful experiences with different skills, and that all teaches you things and makes you an interesting person, no matter how well you do them.”

Years later, reflecting on this conversation with the archeologist, Vonnegut would write the following…

“…I went from a failure, someone who hadn’t been talented enough at anything to excel, to someone who did things because I enjoyed them. I had been raised in such an achievement-oriented environment, so inundated with the myth of talent, that I thought it was only worth doing things if you could “win” at them.”

While Kurt Vonnegut would certainly go on to “win” as a novelist, it is in his art––a craft that he would often escape to when the writing became too difficult to pen down––the we see the full impact of the archeologist’s advice.

If there is anything that is certain about Vonnegut’s creativity outside the brilliance of his writing, is that he was a lifetime doodler.

Vonnegut’s art boasts the same strange, satirical flair that made his writing so widely loved and admired.

A quick Google search will present you with pages and pages festooned with bright colors and strange shapes and oddly angled silhouettes ranging from…

A pair of big faces sporting thick, swollen lips, trapped inside geometric patterns…

A woman, drawn from the back, with a behind as large as a starship sitting cross-legged on a yellow mat…

A mustached doodle of Vonnegut himself with a nose two sizes too big, smoking a stubby cigarette, brooding…

This was Vonnegut’s art, in all its glory.

Vonnegut’s daughter, Nanette, told The Huffington Post that her father used to say he would have much rather been a visual artist than a writer.

“People are so surprised to find out he wasn’t happy in his studio… One thing he said in Anne Lamott’s book was that he felt every time he sat down to write, that he had no arms. He had no idea where to begin, and it was a real labor… He worked so hard to get it right. It was tiring. Doing artwork was less tiring...”

Vonnegut’s passion for art allowed him to approach the page recharged, refreshed and with a renewed sense of vigor.

And so today I will leave you with this…

Choose the thing you want to “win” at.

But then give yourself permission to do all the other shit because you want to, because you enjoy it, because it makes your life better, fuller and lighter.

By Cole Schafer.

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