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Urban-Muse Editorial #2 – September 2019
MidSommar’s End
Wow! What a Summer!
Through this Summer we had lots of great events like Disney’s recent D23, E3 (Keanu), and all the various regional Comic-Con’s all over the world. During these events we always see so many artists attend and set up booths and share their art with the world. During these times it’s always a mad crush of new content from these events, like Stanley Lau’s infamous sketches, and a million amazing cosplayers getting a chance to show off creations they’ve been working on all year. There have been some awful things going on in current events that I won’t get into. But suffice it to say, things are kind of rough all over right now.
HIGHLIGHT: Justine Florentino’s Asuka (Neon Genesis Evangelion) (LINK)
Beating Depression
Some of you may be in school and had the summer off but most of us had to stay inside in the AC and work through our drudgery. Without going into detail I have a pretty boring day job that isn’t paying me enough and I’m looking to use what I have learned here at Urban-Muse at a larger corporation, ideally a very large magazine. (more on the magazine industry later) So during the summer I would spend my days doing that. But this Summer for me was different. If you’ve been reading Urban-Muse Magazine (Not enough have), you might have gathered that depression is something that has been with me my whole adult life. For the past 2 years I have been working at it daily with medication, a therapist, a psychiatrist, a major depression case study I enrolled in, leading a depression support group with hundreds of Los Angelinos, as well as changing my diet, eating and sleeping habits, and working out like a madman 5 days a week. Over this summer alone I lost 15 pounds, I’m looking better than I have in years, and I’m proud to say as of right now, I am not depressed, at all. I beat it.
Doing that was insanely difficult and during the past 2 years trying to get to this state I have learned so much about myself, depression, and other people suffering from this. I have a lot to say about this, so I’m just going to tease, that I will probably write a book about it sometime. The title in my head is “Waking Up In Los Angeles.” It might take me 20 years to write it though so don’t expect it in my next editorial.
Spent part of the Summer at the Beach! I tried to get out of the house and do fun things as much as possible to beat the blues. Happy to say it worked!
Depression is a major problem in the arts community and every issue of the magazine asked artists how they deal with depression if they have it or know of someone who has it. I feel part of my obligation running Urban-Muse is to highlight amazing artists and great things going on in the arts. But to also shine focus on things that are wrong and awful. Depression is one of those things. Way too many artists are depressed and it’s heartbreaking because I know exactly how they feel. I don’t have the answers, all I can do is say that help is out there, try and look for support groups in your area, if possible find a therapist, but most importantly try not to isolate yourself and try to rely on others for help. It’s ok to ask for help.
This is not the last Urban-Muse has to say on the topic. I want to find some way to help. But it’s a monumental task and I’d like to form some kind of awareness campaign that could spread virally (not associated with Urban-Muse, completely unbranded), encouraging artists with depression to seek help. If a campaign to combat depression in the arts community sounds like something you’d like to be involved in please contact me. Ideally I would love to have a mental health care professional help me write/create something that can help make people’s lives better.
SUMMER HIGHLIGHT- Amazing Work from Tati Moons (LINK)
Failed Slogan
Last editorial we were very excited to launch our new slogan “Urban-Muse Pays Artists. With Cash not Exposure.” and that’s still true. But that slogan didn’t work at all. The intended purpose was to show people specifically how Urban-Muse spends it’s money by investing in other artists, ideally this would inspire and encourage people to support the patreon. patreon.com/urbanmuse.
That happened somewhat, but really it backfired. It’s actually pretty funny. Instead of seeing a spike in Patreon support it actually dropped slightly and I started receiving messages from young artists in south east asia begging me for money. One guy asked me to buy his school supplies, another asked me to buy him a car… So the impression given by that slogan was, Urban-Muse has sacks of cash and we are paying artists all over the place, money money money…. No. That’s not what’s going on at all.
We will continue to pay artists who we commission for covers or feature on features like this. But we won’t push that slogan anymore. It’s a fine slogan. Very assertive. and Very True. But it didn’t have the desired effect, so back to the drawing board.
Ideally if Urban-Muse were able to find a large corporate sponsor or possibly restructure as a Non-Profit and try and get grants and stuff this might be possible on a larger scale. But for now this is a small amount of money out of pocket.
This is the last time you will see this slogan. However we will still keep paying artists we work with forever.
SUMMER HIGHLIGHT: Beautiful piece from Liang Xing. (LINK)
Kawhi me a River
The big news over the summer if you were a NBA fan is the Kawhi Leonard free agency saga. Throughout early July he had the entire NBA hostage as they were waiting to see what he would do. Eventually he decided to go the LA Clippers. I wanted him to go the LA Lakers personally. It was an amazing period in history for sports news and memes because he completely dominated during that period. I live in LA so it was especially insane here. Everyone was very very tense.
Via Bleacher Report: (Artist Unknown/Uncredited)
The Arts are struggling.
Last editorial I basically had to come to the readers hat and hand and admit the magazine project has not reached a sustainable level of support. I felt pretty bad about this, but I don’t feel like it was a failure because the four issues Urban-Muse published through this website and patreon are some of our finest work ever. A failure would have been announcing a magazine project, collecting money, and never delivering, that would be a failure. Urban-Muse created an insanely good art magazine that had a 4 issue run and highlighted 35 best artists in the world. I cannot see that as anything but a success.
A couple weeks ago, fellow art magazine Hi-Fructose magazine did a call for subscriptions citing cashflow problems.
This did not surprise me at all, so many magazine of all kinds all over the world are going out of business. And I can tell you from trying to launch my own, the demand just isn’t there anymore. And the cost of actually printing those glossy pages? Insanely high. My personal feeling is the Magazine industry is soon to be niche thing, that will continue to be around, but more for specialists and collectors something like Vinyl records.
So of course I feel for Annie Owens and the whole Hi-Fructose crew, but I’m sure they’ll be able to hang on for a few more years. If you want to support Hi Fructose you can support them Here: (Link).
Josh Keyes Hi-Fructose Cover
Algorithms from Hell
I have a lot to say about how Facebook/Instagram’s (Same Company) algorithms and behaviours are systematically killing the arts and small business, but I don’t have an organized enough plan to combat it yet. One thing I would like to do is to actually meet with people at facebook at their HQ and discuss the problem first hand and offer solutions to help fix it rather than just complaining bitterly on the internet. I am too small to do this though. What it would take is creating a campaign (Similar to the anti depression campaign) that aggressively criticises facebook’s many failings that would make our voices so loud it would be impossible to ignore. More on this later. My thoughts on the matter resemble this jumbled mess of equations below. I will have more to say when I find an elegant solution. I’m going to fix this even if it takes meeting Zuckerberg himself.
Movies are Art too.
If I’m being honest, I spent most of the Summer in movie theaters. This summer I saw Once Upon a Time in Hollywood 3 times, and I saw MidSommar 2 times. In terms of art, these were the two greatest pieces of art I saw this summer, so I would like to talk about them because both of these films had a major effect on me. I saw a few others, but those were the major ones. I’d like to end this feature talking about these because it’s fun.
I saw Blade Runner (My Favorite Movie) here on my birthday. The Actress who played the Snake Lady was there and actually sat right next to me.
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
This is Quentin Tarantino’s magnum opus. This to me is easily the best film he has ever made. It does what he said it would, it takes everything he’s learned from all the movies he’s made and worked on throughout his career and puts it all together in one kickass package and ties it up with a neat little bow. The Casting of Margot Robbie, Brad Pitt, and Leonardo DiCaprio is absolutely perfect, and each of them delivers a legendary performance. I saw the movie 3 times, and each time I got something different out of it. In terms of how this movie affects the arts, my god, let me count the ways.
Amazing poster. I actually don’t know who did it, so if you did drop a comment and I’ll update this caption. There’s many more like this throughout the film. It fits the “feel” of this movie and its era perfectly. Kudos.
First off watching this movie is like stepping into a time machine to 1969 Los Angeles. every single shred of paper has been designed to look like it came from that era. The soundtrack is designed so you feel like you’re listening to a radio DJ at WKHJ Los Angeles playing the days top hits. The Costumes are ridiculous, they look so authentic. Particularly Robbie and her 1960’s movie star chic. The illusion is completely convincing. It has the same feel as actually watching a film from that era. I would recommend it to virtually anyone unless they have a problem with some grotesque violence. Without spoiling anything I’ll just say. This movie kicks ass.
MidSommar
And Finally, Ari Aster’s latest masterpiece MidSommar. Again this is a movie you can’t say much without spoiling. But I will say it definitely fits in the horror genre. It is one of the scariest most disturbing movies of all time. It also happens to be one of the best movies of all time. My friends on my personal friendslist have had to hear me ranting and raving about how good this movie is all summer, so why not Urban-Muse too!? If you liked the movie Hereditary I would say this is very similar but in my opinion wayyyyy better. This movie is amazing. I saw it twice in order to see the movie from an entirely different perspective. And believe it or not I’m even going to see it for a third time, the reason being Ari Aster has been kind enough to release his directors cut for one weekend only. I am not sure what to expect other than MORE. This is actually why I chose the title of this article. “MidSommar‘s End” it seems appropriate.
Watching MidSommar is like taking a really weird vacation, and during the 2 or so hours it lasts you are completely transported and your own reality starts to seem far away. I can’t stop thinking about the movie, and it’s been that way all summer. 
Epilogue
So if I had to sum up this somewhat disjointed Editorial, I would say the following: Urban-Muse isn’t going anywhere, we have been structured since day 1 accruing ZERO DEBT and can sustainably continue to exist forever because our operating costs are very low. Urban-Muse throughout it’s history was run by someone suffering from crippling depression. That’s not true anymore. I might even make the site background white? We’ll see.
The arts and magazines are struggling / dying all over the world. But I will not sit by idly, I’m going to fight it and fight for the artists I love so dearly. We can make things better. We have to.
SUMMER HIGHLIGHT:
Another amazing piece from Irakli Nadar. You can read our feature with him HERE (LINK).
The Marathon Continues.
Curt Anderson
Editor in Chief
Urban-Muse.com
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