You're not making content. You're making art.
There’s something sacred about each idea that spirals into you. An offering from the billions of minds that may need to hear or see what you have to share. A donation from the wind, sea, and dots of sap that trickle down trees. Reminding us that we’re all connected. How dare you diminish that by calling it content?
It is art when what you share remains in the insides of someone as they live here on Earth. The significance of a thought, image, or word that gushes from your being that then spreads like spores into the consciousness of others. Be it one mind, twenty-two ears, sixty-four eyes, or a thousand hearts. It is art.
Even if data-soaked platforms label what you create as content, there is something artistic even if you perceive what you share as occupying the space of minutiae. The so-frothy-it-might-erupt cup of hot chocolate, close-up of the knuckles of your love as their hand presses into yours, fields of bluebells, and Vermeer-esque mirror portraits in a hotel lift; what is that if not art?
Art is in our perception of beauty. What bawls out from the familiarity of what we experience and demands to be captured in some way. The moments worthy of writing about. Photographing. Painting. Allocating to the world.
The house that your art exists in, doesn’t have any bearing on if it should be labelled as such. If your substantial words that were born in a 3am inspiration spiral, find their resting place in a TikTok caption, it doesn’t make it ‘only’ content. If those same words went to live in a bestselling book, they would be called art. Your writing might be sitting on a dining table called Substack, with three people consuming it; it’s still art. You don’t need more people eating with you to call it that.
We push people into limited boxes of content creators and influencers, society diminishing their value as we face the complexity of art vs commerce, accessible capital by way of the internet, ethics of advertising, and the confronting thoughts of what it means to earn success in a productivity obsessed world. If you are curating outfits on Instagram, setting up a shoot, editing footage, and writing about each look; offline you would be called a stylist, photographer, videographer, and producer. Your vision would be named as artistic. Online, you’re just making content. Don’t diminish it, even if others do. You are an embodiment of creative expression.
Not all content is art, I hear you say. I agree. It also depends on how you define art. I am a writer not just because I write each day. I am a writer when I write intentionally instead of coincidentally. When I’m writing a quick need-to-know-info text message, or speaking to a customer service chat bot, those words are simply coincidental. I’m writing because I have to. Outside of that, I write with intention. When I pen poetry in my notes app, create monologues from fictional characters, write for this very newsletter, or scribble thank you cards.
When I wrote colourful tales about the fragrant notes in perfumes as a beauty writer, the websites I wrote for would probably call it content, but those words were intentional. Weaving senses into story. Imagination and memory spritzed onto the page. When I’ve written copy for press releases to get the boost to my bank account, what took me no time or much intention, was then praised by the hands who wouldn’t have been able to write it. That thing called perception, hey.
For me, art is expression with intention. Sharing what we observe, think, and explore, which then moves us into making, moulding, speaking, performing, singing, writing, photographing, cooking, sewing, dancing, and drawing it into existence as a means of cultural contribution. Things of beauty.
If you’re churning out twenty pieces of content a week without intention to hit SEO keywords, and generate clicks or profit then is it art? For me, no. If you can somehow, infuse your spirit, integrity, thoughtfulness and humanness into those pieces, then don’t diminish it. In the pervasiveness of the starving artist story, there’s a tendency to call it content if its purpose is primarily to make money. That we have to sell out, if we want our art to make money. Those stories aren’t doing us any good.
Even if you have to produce content, to be able to make art, don’t belittle the importance of it. We will have to write captions, notes, and emails, as a means to an end or to get people to invest in the value of our art. That’s okay. We might have to write mind-numbing copy to be able to afford eggs, and content that would never make it to our portfolios to pay rent. In this system it is often necessary to be able to survive, and that too is okay. It doesn’t take anything away from your art.
If your art doesn’t make money, it is still art.
We have walked into stark galleries and sat before things that we would never label as art had it not been for the recognisable name of the artist who created it, and the prestige of the gallery we stepped into. The enduring power and allure of art is that what is art to me, may well not be art to you, and back and forth, and in-between.
I don’t want our dearest creations that we devoted ourselves to during this time in human history, to be siloed into dust-spattered archival boxes called Just More Content. Yes, we are flooded in information and infinite scrolls, but there is more art than we will ever see lurking behind what we rush past and ignore.
Our ideas are whispers from the ether. What we turn into form from our mind’s eye is the ultimate metamorphosis. What moves us into disseminating all that we witness during our stay here on Earth, is holy stuff. You are the channel for sharing a photo of the textures of tree bark to your group chat, listing your gratitudes in a caption, and the thought that will change the course of many people’s day when you tell it on a podcast.
When we create we are in conversation with all that is. You are art in all motion, manner and matter. Your work deserves a place here, irrespective of how many glances it gets or if it is remunerated. Even when big tech, publishers, and mainstream media scrape it all of its substance by calling it content, you are still making art. It deserves a place here, and so do you.
