Heard Neil Gaiman’s speech? Now read it

FANTASTIC MISTAKES: Neil Gaiman’s ‘Make Good Art’ Speech Available at National Book Store

We live in a YouTube world, where people get their how-to information, knowledge and wisdom in four-minute video bursts. Some say YouTube is the world’s new university (minus the scroll of paper when you graduate). Certainly, a number of famous folk have delivered graduation speeches that have gone viral on YouTube, and Neil Gaiman is no exception. Like Steve Jobs with his inspiring Stanford speech of 2005, or David Foster Wallace’s “This is water” speech at Kenyon, Gaiman’s commencement address to graduates of Philadelphia’s University of the Arts was a YouTube classic.

And now it’s a book, designed by graphic artist legend Chip Kidd. I’ve always thought it curious that modern publishing could turn a 20-minute speech — something that, Gaiman is quick to point out in the introduction, can be viewed in its video form for free on Vimeo — into an actual book. Well, they did it with Wallace’s speech, too. Think of it as part of the “inspirational” literary genre, and you can see why the book form is still an attractive proposition. People used to buy “pocket books” of wisdom and aphorisms (a genre practically invented by Ben Franklin) because they were fun to refer to when stuck in line somewhere, or when patience is required, or in any modern time-suck situation. The little niblets of wisdom do the soul good. It’s just not the same, whipping out your cell phone and watching Gaiman in a mortarboard holding forth on video. That’s too much information, somehow. We need to tune into the words. Plus the pauses between his sentences are really long.

What Fantastic Mistakes tells us is that the road to success — in the arts, though arguably in a lot of other fields — takes patience and dedication. Gaiman, creator of Sandman comics and a plethora of other fiction, has a knack for speeches sprinkled with just the right dosage of humor and encouragement. His main message is that, no matter what, we should continue to make good art. Even if the world seemingly doesn’t care. Even if the rejection letters keep piling up. Even if you’re not sure what “good art” is anymore. Presumably, the graduates of the university where Gaiman is speaking are professionally trained, and therefore already in command of some idea of what “good art” is. At least Gaiman’s advice is predicated on this.

But this is a sticky point. What is “good art”? What if, despite our best intentions, we really can’t tell good from bad anymore? What if we have lost objectivity? Do we let the market decide, which seems to be guided by more commercial instincts? Or do we stubbornly plow on, in the face of what can feel like a whistling void? Anyway, I propose the “good art” problem is solved by subtracting “good” from the phrase “Make good art.” Thus we have: “Make art.” This may be all we are capable of, at times. And perhaps, in pursuit of that art, even if it threatens to be very shabby indeed, we might find ourselves making a course correction into something actually good.

Gaiman starts with a helpful admonition: “Do what you love.” “The one thing that nobody else has is you: your voice, your mind, your story, your vision.” You, as an artist, will be alone at sea, sending out messages in bottles. Eventually, he suggests, some will float back — containing job offers. Even if they don’t, he says, keep making “good art.”

Eventually, he continues, as the bottles return in greater numbers, you will have to choose which to respond to, and which to ignore. Some will entail years of commitment, which may or may not involve you making “good art.” So choose carefully.

His main points are:

• Many fresh graduates don’t know what to do with their lives, and that’s okay. Those who do know what to do are familiar with “the rules,” what’s possible and what’s impossible. But Gaiman says, “If you don’t know it’s impossible, that makes it easier to do.” So write your own rules.

• If you do know what you like — say, writing science fiction — “then just go and do that.” It makes achieving your goals that much easier.

• There will be problems of failure, and problems of success. You have to become thick-skinned about failure, and never do things just for money.

• Making mistakes is proof that you’re out there, making things. Sometimes mistakes are fortunate, sometimes they’re just instructional. No matter what, Gaiman says, your art is “a lifesaver,” the thing that will get you through the arid parts of existence. So, make good art, even if bad stuff happens. (And on good days, too).

• If you do find success, try to enjoy it when it happens. “Enjoy the ride.” This last was a bit of advice given by Stephen King when Gaiman had first achieved book success, with lines of people waiting to get their Sandman copies signed. Sadly, Gaiman didn’t enjoy it. That was a mistake, and he now sees that enjoying the ride — instead of worrying about “what’s next” — can take you to new, unexpected places.

One example might be this book, which comes alive through Chip Kidd’s jazzy graphic approach, juggling type sizes and overlapping red and blue lines to emphasize Gaiman’s points. Kidd’s style employs white space in bold, “breaking the rules” ways. You “engage” with this book, the way you might with Dr. Seuss’s Oh, the Places You’ll Go! Seeing text as a living thing is just another example of how the arts overlap, continuing to feed one another and inspire more (and better) “mistakes.”

Whether you are a fan of Gaiman’s creations or not, this book is inspiring; like Jobs and Wallace, Gaiman wants young people to know that the world may be a marketplace, but you are not (necessarily) a commodity. You can be true to your own creative directives. And make good art.