Anhedonia

The hardest part of doing The Bell is the moment I finish an issue. Layout happens in the dead of night. It’s 3AM, I’m watching the first copy come off the printer (generally with f***ed up print margins, natch), and while I should be thrilled or even relieved I’m just tired. The whole day afterward I’m giving people copies and they’re reading and enjoying and I should be happy but instead I’m tired.

Anhedonia, a fancy term I picked up from Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections, makes it very difficult to act as I should around The Bell. Criticism is hard to take, I can’t enter into a dialogue without feeling that everyone is apathetic to my work, and that people just take copies out of politeness.

By the time I’ve recovered, it’s time to work on the next issue, and there’s no time in between to luxuriate in being done, nor am I very excited to distribute copies.

Whoooo! That’s enough with the kvetching. It is also at those tired moments that I realize how good it feels to be doing something. I don’t have to tear down the work of others to feel good about my own, I don’t have to comment or rip off classics to do something I feel is worthwhile, all I have to do is keep working and bang, I’m an artist.