Writers Can Overcome Their Insecurities
Death and the High Cost of Not Overcoming Your Fears
Every writer feels insecurities. The kind that make you feel sick to your stomach.
I believe the miracle of overcoming those insecurities is what attracts fans. It's why folks attach themselves to the creative journey of others. It's why they're willing to crack open your book.
Releasing a piece of art into the world, despite how human we all are, despite how much we might worry how imperfect our releases might be, requires bravery.
And there's a certain amount of respect that comes with being able to do that. There's an endearing quality to releasing something, opening it up to public scrutiny despite our human condition.
Even someone who leaves a bad review has respect for what you've done on some level, although it make take the form of jealousy.
Some never get brave enough to release something. Others didn't have much trouble in the first place. But we all had to start somewhere.
If creatives build enough courage and confidence, it's tough to hold even the most egregious manuscript against them.
But even the big talkers are insecure. Especially the big talkers.
There's a wonderful animated short which is better than it has any right to be and illustrates this point nicely. It's called...
D.C. Showcase: Death
"Death" as in ... this Death, from D.C. Vertigo:
Feel free to laugh ... or take her seriously; 1989 was a much different time. I've spoken about ankh symbolism in the past, and Sam Kieth already did a sufficient job ribbing this take on the famous goth psychopomp in his own comic, The Maxx:
The connection being that Sam Kieth did the art for the first six issues of DC's 1989 series Sandman. And frankly, Kieth was right.
But I'm not here to riff on Gaiman's Death of the Endless because sometimes, a "cute chick" is exactly who you need to escort you to the other side, as you'll soon see.
I've made it no secret that, while I'm not much of a fan of Gaiman himself these days, I am a fan of the storytelling one can find in his Sandman comics:
So naturally, I gravitated toward the various video offerings as they popped up over the years, including the impressive fan-made movie 24-hour Diner, which was a near-perfect live action recreation of a creepy and haunting event frontloaded in Sandman issue #6.
It's a pity the TV series was outdone by fans on a coffee can budget. But that's neither here nor there.
We're here to talk about a 2019 animated short that may well prove D.C. and Warner Bros. Animation are still quite capable of delivering stories without feeling like propaganda machines, capable of telling tales that leave room for discussion.
Watching the short is not required as I'll recap it here, but be warned that there will be spoilers ahead. (The animation is split into four parts, each clocking in at 4 and a half minutes).
At first, this animation seems like nothing special. Neil Gaiman was absent for this project, and while the animation quality is nice, it's nothing to write home about.
None-the-less, it was helmed by the somewhat underrated veteran comic writer J.M. DeMatteis, and it starts with a young boy doodling on the floor, surrounded by his art.
That boy was me. By the time I was in high school, every notebook I'd ever owned was full of drawings and my bedroom walls were plastered with tacked-up artwork from floor to ceiling.
Maybe he was you, too.
Years later, our artist Vincent is in what should be the years of his prime.
He's alone now, bouncing from job-to-job. And the writer lays on the "struggling artist" thing thick. Even thicker than Barton Fink.
He still cares deeply about art, but the cartoonishly uncaring world around him does not. This bald guy, for instance, is firing Vincent because he was painting a gate with an artist's care.
"You don't understand," argues Vincent, "I have to do it right."
In his defense, it was a very large and historic gate - The one that belongs to Arkham Asylum. But his arguments brook no purchase.
Now fired, Vinnie hits the bar.
He's heckled by demons (invisible to everyone but Vincent), saying he has no legacy. They remind him that he's never hit it off with a girl. That he doesn't have a family. That he's never put his creations out into the world. He's become a loser, and they laugh at the fact that no one can seem to see how special and talented he is.
Eventually, he can't take it anymore and escapes into the darkened hallway at the back of the bar. He lights one up and has his first chance encounter with the titular character.
She sees he's had a rough day and strikes up a conversation. Being that this personification of Death is quite cute, and that Vincent has fumbled the ball whenever he's spoken with girls in the past, he's more than willing to open up to her. And to his surprise they have a pleasant exchange about how he's living the "struggling artist" cliche to the letter and can't seem to escape it.
As they speak, he's stricken by her mysterious beauty so much that he feels inspired to paint her.
Then his demons appear in the hallway, saying he doesn't really want to paint her so much as get her into his apartment.
Death of the Endless kindly excuses herself and the demons torment him more, telling him that he’s blown it with yet another girl and he'll never see her again.
Then he flashes back to art school where his teacher goes so far as to trample his artwork, saying he doesn't have enough talent to succeed in the art world.
I had that art teacher. There's one in every college. He hangs up his own artwork for each assignment and treats it as the "exemplary work". If you show actual talent, he feels the need to dissuade you, beat you down, make you feel like nothing.
Having been unable to hack it in the art world, a professor like this has got a huge chip on his shoulder. He's better than everyone in the class, too good to be a mere art teacher.
My real life art teacher called me into his office halfway through the semester and told me, "There's literally nothing you can do at this point to avoid me failing you." And there was glee in his words.
He had his favorites, and I wasn't one of them. I couldn't help but notice his "favorites" were all the girls in the class. The boys were mostly failed. I later found out this story was all too common, and that this pattern of his had been going on for years. It was the first time I'd met someone who was truly sexist.
Needless to say...I avoided his classes from then on.
In a drunken stupor, Vincent stumbles home to his apartment in the rain. He sits in front of the easel only for the four demons to materialize and heckle him further.
"It's always someone else's fault, isn't it?" taunts one of them.
He flashes back through rough break-ups, a painful 6 year relationship, and all the times he thought he was going to prove people wrong, only to prove them right: He's become the loser they thought he was.
Feeling pathetic, he falls asleep on his sofa, the four demons staring down upon him as he dreams of the happy child he once was, trying in vain to figure out where it all went wrong.
He wakes with a gasp, hearing a disagreement outside, and an ambulance.
There seems to be emergency lights nearby whenever he encounters this mysterious girl.
Remembering he's an artist, Death invites herself in and asks to see his work.
The demons flare up, saying she's going to hate his artwork and think that he's an amateur.
But she asks, "Most of them aren't finished. Why?"
He says nothing, fishing for an explanation.
The demons say:
"Excuses."
"Talentless."
"All talk."
"You're scared."
Death assures him that he's gifted, but she believes something's missing from his artwork, something he once had. A spark.
Vincent talks about his childhood when he still had joy in his life. A magical time when all that mattered was the artwork. Time was seemingly limitless and the rest of the world would just ... disappear.
This does ignite a spark in Vincent, and he asks again to paint her.
The demons try to dissuade him, but he ignores them and pushes through with the request. He tells her he sees an incredible sadness within her, an impossible wisdom he wishes to capture on canvas.
She seems pleased by that explanation and becomes his sitter.
The demons constantly berate him from behind, hounding him as he sketches out the pencilwork and lays paint to canvas.
"Amateur."
"How dare you think you're an artist?"
"Embarrassing."
"You're screwing up."
But as he finishes the painting, something profound happens - The demons die in agony, one by one, until none are left standing.
An absolutely cathartic moment.
And then he gasps at the final product, hardly able to believe such a thing came from his own two hands.
He's finally completed something. Something beautiful. And he's free of all the torment. All these years, he only had to fight past the demons and actually finish something. The answer was that simple.
But as he's about to share how happy he is with the finished piece, he notices the rain against the windowsill standing oddly still. Upon further inspection, the rain droplets outside are all suspended, fixed in time.
The world is still. Life has stopped. Time has stopped.
"What's happening?"
Death simply replies that time has no meaning for the dead.
That's when he sees his own corpse sitting on the couch. The cigarette is burned halfway to the filter, embers suspended in midair.
"I'm dead? I'm ... dead. Then you are..."
"But at least there's that. At least I left something behind of real value. They'll all finally know who I-"
The clock ticks. Time resumes. The rain pours. And...
"No, no!" cries Vincent. "How could you do this to me?"
Death explains it's not her doing - his ending was written in the Book of Destiny.
He falls to his knees, begging her to at least save the painting. And then he flashes back to when he was young.
And he realizes that he once drew her when he was a child. It's like he always knew she was there.
With that, he realizes this was all his fault. And if it weren't for her, he wouldn't have ever understood what it was like to break free from his shackles. He let his time run out and failed to get over his own personal hurdles until it was too late. She merely reintroduced the joy of his childhood as a parting gift, since he couldn't do it on his own.
And as she escorts him to the afterlife, he's a child again.
Death was his caring guide. Destiny had written his fate. Dream had inspired him, and kept showing him his childhood. Delirium caused him doubt and confusion. Desire made him want to prove everyone wrong and become a famous artist. And Destruction was the arsonist.
In the final scene, the firefighters found a single painting that had miraculously survived. Death, it seemed, saved his painting for the world to enjoy, after all.
But don't count on that last miracle, artists. You need to get over your personal hurdles before it's too late. Memento Mori.
Very touching retelling! Thank you!