The Right Questions with James Victore
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The Right Questions with James Victore
Episode 68: My Start
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A pool of melted crayons on a hot porch.
That’s where the spark ignites—a small, searing memory that grows into a compass for a creative life that refuses to wait for permission. We pull the thread from that moment through school punishments, false starts, and the long apprenticeship with failure to reveal a simple truth: you don’t get your start, you make it.
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All right, let's do this thing. Cue the fake music. Howdy, and welcome to The Right Questions, the podcast with no fluff, no ads, no BS, just straight to the point. I am your generous and gentle host, uh James Victory, and Bidiba Doobadaba. And today we're going to talk about um me. Um I generally wouldn't think to reminisce like this on air, right? But today's program is about uh my beginnings, how I got my start. You know, it's like the lead actress is has broken her ankle. Who do we have? How about that cute guy, James Victori? Like, oh my god, a star is born. I indulge this point solely because I was asked. Right? Um, I was asked by one of my awesome listeners, so thank you, Lari. L-A-R-E-E, I think that's how you may pronounce it. You know, and of course, I could amuse myself for hours chuckling about stories from my past and my my meteoric rise. And many of these stories, as Mark Twain would put it, um, are true. But here's the thing: I was thinking about it. I was thinking, well, that's a silly thing to do. Just talk about me and my start. But I am taking this opportunity to point out a couple of lessons to be learned in my process. Because I think my process is yours, your process, right? My start, my career as a creative person has many similarities to yours and probably is not dissimilar to any creator of note, because in the particular lies the universal, right? We are all the same person. We all have the same trials and tribulations, the same loves, the same fears. We all grow from the same roots, we just become different flowers. So this is my start, my story, my beginnings. And I hope you find yourself in it. And I will start right off by saying, I was born this way. And hail, the first line from my book, Fact Perfection, says, we are all born wildly creative. But I was born to do this job. I couldn't be anybody else. Oh, of course I could be anybody else. I could be the fucking president if I wanted to, but I don't know if I would be happy. Because I'm a creative person. I was born with that urge, as we all were. And I think most people on the planet are somewhat create are somewhat frustrated in their creativity. Even the creative people are frustrated in their creativity because we want more. You know, talk to any New York City cab driver about what they want to do or what they who they are. They're not cab drivers, not a fucking one of them. I was born to do this job. Actually, I met one cab driver who was plying out his creativity in a most beautiful way. He would hand out little cards to you. And he says, and he would say, you know, my name is Johnny, and I'm I'm an app. So when you're not happy, think of me and I will bring happiness to you. I mean, this guy creatively was plying out his gift while driving taxis. He was trying to change uh our mood, change our day, change our attitude from behind the steering wheel. So we were all born wildly creative, and I think I think when we don't ply that out and when we don't follow through with it, trouble arises. And here's the first lesson. All I did was hold on to that star. Right? I realized early on, and I held on to that. I fought for my right to party, right? Throughout my career, up until yesterday, possibly this morning even. My creativity and my ability to play and amuse myself and have fun and make people smile or react otherwise is a gift. And I knew that from the beginning. I saw that and I didn't want to let it go. I wouldn't let my family, my parents, I wouldn't let school, I wouldn't let society.
SPEAKER_00:And therein is the struggle.
SPEAKER_01:So this is a story about me being distracted at so many points in my life. Right? The the the drive to follow the cliche instead of becoming me. Right? When you look at Joseph Campbell's um the circle of uh the circle of life or the uh the the arc of the hero, right? What's missing when he dro he makes this beautiful circle and all along these points is the arc of the hero, right? He's he where where where you start and where you meet your mentor and all the trials and and and finding the gold and bringing it home to your tribe, all beautiful points. But what's missing in there is the multitude of failures all along the way. If the journey is the beautiful straight rails of a train, every single trestle, every single tie is a distraction, is failure, is a test. And I was thinking about this the other day, thinking about um preparing to talk on this subject to you, and also just thinking about creators like uh a writer, let's say, or a um graphic designer or an artist. And I was thinking about musicians and actors. I listen to a lot of actors and musicians talk about their craft. I find it, I find it so much more rewarding than listening to artists and to graphic designers, certainly, certainly more interesting than graphic designers. But for them, there is a process, and it may start when they're five or fifteen, but it goes on through a huge chunk of their life, some of them their entire lives. I know some some leading role actors who only became famous, only became uh it became a profitable for them late in life. But they started early. So there's this process that they have to go through, and musicians have to go through. Think about this a musician starting, you know, as a screaver, starting like, you know, just like standing in the street with a hat, singing hate, you know, or at a at a folk festival or at a birthday party. You know, watch the documentary that um uh Bruce, right, Springsteen does. He talks about doing bar mitzvahs and birthday parties, playing anywhere he could, just to get chops, just to learn. So actors and musicians go through this process of getting more and more comfortable who they are, more and more comfortable with rejection. But they love it so much that they will keep going, they will keep going. And the majority of aspiring artists and actors and musicians and designers give up and they don't follow through or th or they get distracted, and they'll take a job close to what they're doing, as a support for another artist, because they can't handle the rejection or the fear of poverty. And this, my beautiful people, may be our first and most important lesson that we have to get comfortable with the time spent, and we have to get comfortable with rejection and failure, and dare I say, even poverty. So, me being born this way, what does that mean? Okay, it goes like this. My very first memory, right? You have these visual memories of you as a kid, my very first memory, and I had thought about this, I had thought about this for years and never shared it. My very first visual memory was of a pool of melted crayons on a hot cement porch. And this must have been when I was four or five, because we lived in I grew up in the military. And when I was four or five, we were in Albuquerque, where there would have been a hot cement porch. And me or my sisters left out this pool of crayons, or left out the crayons, and they melted in the sun and made this most beautiful mélange of colors. And a funny thing is, I've realized recently that my work up until today strives to recreate that. That made such an impression on me that one, I remembered it when you're not supposed to remember shit from when you're four or five, right? They say your memory starts like later in your later in the sevens and nines.
SPEAKER_00:But anyway, so I had this reaction to this, to this beauty.
SPEAKER_01:And to test whether I remembered this or whether I was making this up, I spoke to my mom maybe two years ago. And I said, Hey, mom, do you remember these melted crayons on the back of a porch, possibly in Albuquerque? And she did, she did remember it. But I didn't press her. I didn't ask her how she remembered it, because how she remembered it would be the way perhaps possibly I would remember something like that, or the way I would react to something like that with my own kids. As we do as parents, right? Thoughtlessness, right? Oh my god, who did that? Who's cleaning it up? We don't own this port, we don't own this house, right? Which for me, two things. One, the beauty. I remember that. The pool of melted crayons. And then two, the reaction. That very visceral reaction. I think I liked them both. I think they both became a lesson for me. It was both like, oh my god, I wouldn't I want that. That's important. How can this beautiful mélange of colors create that reaction from somebody? So I was called to that. That was a very early and searing memory for me, and an important one. So as a kid, I was called creative. And I knew it was not a compliment. It meant I was mischievous, it meant I was trouble, it meant I was messy, it meant I was loud, I was to this and to that and to the other thing. And I was a good kid. I wasn't, I wasn't a hooligan, I wasn't a crazy kid, I wasn't trouble. I was creative, and I wanted to ply that out. So from the time I was five until I was 19, I won't go into any of the details because we don't have that much time. I could I could go on and on. We won't go into the details, but from five to like 19 when I left home, there's a long list of, you know, primary and middle school and high school, a list of my creativity winning winning me slaps on the wrist. So through my schooling years, my creativity was a target. It wasn't something ever, it was rarely applauded. By authority, you know, by my friends, of course, they thought that was cool or funny or silly or stupid. But by authority, it won me a slap on the wrist. I drew in my books. They were not doodles, they were a visual shorthand for myself to remember, right? These were mnemonics or learning devices. I was like, oh, I have to figure out how to fucking learn this. I have to do it my way. So I drew in the book. Uh-oh, don't do that, right? You get in trouble for drawing in your book. By the time I was 10, we had moved off the military base and into the country. You know, we were we were away from the town where I went to school. And so I would take a bus to school. After school, the school would let out about three o'clock. I would walk to the university library. There's a state university of New York library, and that's where my mom worked. But she had to drive me home, so I would have to wait till she got off work. And it might be an hour or it might be two hours. And her trying to amuse me, she knew I liked pictures, picture books. So she would go and get a stack of picture books and put them in front of me. And give me some give me some paper and a pen. And these books, oddly enough, were design and art history books. Like design books like graffiti annuals from the 50s and the 60s and the 70s, and print design annuals. And I poured through them and I poured through all the books on art and design, and I got an education of sorts. I got my own education pouring through these books, seeing what I reacted to, seeing what I didn't react to, noticing these things, redrawing the designs. Right? I was I I was so compelled by this work. I wanted to do that thing. But here was the problem. I'm 10 or 11, and creativity has no value in this country. Or at least when you live on a military base, I had no precedence. There was nobody in my village that was an artist. There were maybe some old ladies who did watercolors, but that wasn't what I was looking at in these books. I was looking at the crazy stuff, the beautiful things. So in my life, there were no examples of what I wanted to do. And in most people's lives, the example is the cliche, right? You do what you all, what we all are supposed to do. You go to school, you get a degree, you meet a girl, you get a job, you make some money, you make some babies, right? All in all the way up until like you you finally um retire. And when you retire, then, then you can do what you want. Which I just thought was complete fucking bullshit. But here's the thing. Because I had no precedence, because I had nobody to tell me, hey, kid, psst, psst, look here. There's an alternate route, there's another way, right? I had none of that. So I I the voices inside me were not smart enough, were not strong enough. So I failed to listen to my calling. And shit, I was 10, 15, 17. Understandable, right? Understandable. And it's the proper way. When I taught at the university, when I taught at the School of Visual Arts in New York, I had 19 and 22 and 23-year-olds coming to my class who hadn't failed. They hadn't done anything. They had no ruin to them. So art and the calling wasn't as urgent. So it's important to fail, right? But I hadn't had that call yet. I was doing what I was thought I was supposed to do. So I went to the university. I went to the University of New York right out of high school. And I failed miserably. Because it wasn't what I was supposed to do. I could have faked my way through it. I could have tried. I could have tried, but I would have I would have been faking. And I would have been driving myself to a horrible life. So I went to college. I tried to go to college, but it did not go well. I was also working in a restaurant at the time. That did not go well. But I was lucky. Because in that restaurant, I found my Shiva. I found my muse, my direction in a chef named Gary Danko. In a small upstate New York restaurant, I found Gary Danko, who is now runs a restaurant in San Francisco that you can't get into, called Gary Danko. He knew I was creative. He knew I was an artist at heart. He also knew I was certainly not a waiter. He fired me once and I begged for my job back. And then he fired me again. And he's then he said, Jimmy, because that was my name then, go to New York. So I got kicked out of the nest. I got kicked out of the nest. I was uh 18 or 19. My parents were a little bit tired of me. And I got in the bus, I literally got on a bus and I moved to New York City to go to the School of Visual Arts in New York. And then all of a sudden, aha, my purpose made itself clear. New York City Art School posters. All the posters and art I had looked at in those books. It's like, ah, here's my chance. I had seen these before. I had a clear vision of what I wanted to do and who I wanted to be. I wanted my name on the door. I wanted to be that guy. But at the School of Visual Arts, there wasn't a poster design class. There were design classes. There were art classes. But the kids around me were not serious. Which is maybe, maybe another interesting point for us. We need that community. We need those hot and horny and hungry and serious fucking people around us. I didn't have that. And I had so many distractions because I had to work full-time to support myself. That's a distraction. That is a distraction. That is a distraction. Mortgages and rent and money for girls or money for boys, those are distractions. And plus I was bored. I was bored. I didn't have anybody to light a fire under my ass. So I was distracted. I attracted to the point where my professors noticed and it showed up in my work, and I was asked to leave again. In second school, I was asked to leave. And I did. I didn't fight back. I didn't say, no, no, no, this is where I'm supposed to be. No. I was asked to leave because I was not a good student. So I left. But I walked out of the door of the School of Visual Arts on 23rd Street, and I walked straight up to 56th Street and 7th Avenue? 6th Avenue? 5th, 6th, 7th Avenue, to the 11th floor of Carnegie Hall, where one of my one of my professors had a studio, a tiny little studio, a closet of a studio. His name was Paul Bacon, a book jacket designer. Paul had given me a D, so he knew what kind of student I was. But I asked if I could apprentice with him. I didn't even know the word intern at the time. I was like such a rube. I was to me it was like the sorcerer's apprentice. That was the only thing I knew. And Paul looked at me and he said, Well, nobody ever asked. Which is maybe another lesson for us. Ask. Ask for what you want. You never know. The guy gave me a frickin' D. But I was there standing in front of him, and I was hungry. And here's the thing. This is another important lesson. I could, I could, I could talk for three hours about Paul Bacon. Paul taught me I just hung out. I like literally I swept the floor. I swept the floor while I figured out my ass for my elbow. While I was trying to put together a portfolio of book jackets. Because Paul designed book jackets. I grew up in a library, it made sense. Paul taught me about wine. And he taught me about jazz and how to listen to it. And he taught me about auto racing. Which means Paul taught me everything I needed to know about design. Everything I needed to know to be a good designer. And this is an important important point for you, for me, for us. Don't study design. Figure out who you are, figure out what you love. Follow those things. Follow those things. Become a better person. Become a smarter person. Read about things that you don't understand. Don't get myopic about design.
SPEAKER_00:Because you become smaller. Your work becomes smaller.
SPEAKER_01:So two months, literally within two months after leaving school, I had put together a portfolio of three or four obviously fake book jackets, but they were the books that I loved at the time. One of one from George Orwell, uh, Down and Out in Paris and London, for example. Um and I went out hunting and I got work right away. I was lucky. I knew something about typography. I knew something about I sucked completely. I didn't have a voice. I didn't have a voice, I didn't have a uh a drive, but I had some design to me. You know what design is, right? The pleasant arrangement of shapes on a page. I could figure that part out. So straight off the bat, I got work with a major publisher in New York. And I got very good about walking through the streets of New York, going into different offices and going, hi, and another and another, and I was working for all the major publishers. And I became rather successful at 21. I was making good money. I was wearing suits. I bought my first motorcycle cash, you know, fancy pants boy. I became so successful that I started to believe my own success and believe my own hype. I was making good money, but I was I was making what my clients wanted and what they expected.
SPEAKER_00:I was making book jackets that look like Paul Bacon book jackets. They wanted that. Right? That's the lives of the artist.
SPEAKER_01:You know, here's the life, here's the life of a designer. Here's the life of James Victoria, for example. Like you start off as who is James Victory? And that's when you're just out of school, you're trying to figure out what you're doing, you're out looking for work. Who is James Victoria? The next stage is where I got when I was 21, 22, get me James Victoria, right? Because you now you're hip, now you're the thing, and now people want you. And then you get to that next stage. Get me someone like James Victory. Where people start thinking you're too expensive or you're busy or you're not interested, or that's the third stage. And the fourth stage you never want.
SPEAKER_00:And that is who is James Victory? So at 21, I was who is James Victor?
SPEAKER_01:I was getting into uh get me James Victory. But I was making book jackets look like book jackets. And what I now call making the obvious obviouser. Until I woke up one day and I said, you know what? I have my own opinion. I have my own sense of design and shape and color. I have my own humor and sense of the macabre. And I started putting it into my work, and my work just dropped off. Nobody wanted to work with me. I found out that my clients were not interested in my opinion. Here's another lesson. If you want to make a lot of money, keep your mouth shut. Don't ever have an opinion. I mean, you will undoubtedly become disillusioned and cynical, you know, but everything has a price.
SPEAKER_00:Right? Everything has a price. But I had my own sense of design.
SPEAKER_01:And I also remembered that I was not on my purpose anymore. I was a book jacket designer. I didn't move to New York to become a book jacket designer. I moved to New York to become a poster designer. I moved to New York to become one of the best poster designers on the planet. And I wasn't doing that. I was off my purpose. So these clients wouldn't work with me. That was fine. I had to go find my own. I had to build my reputation, my name. I had to listen to my heart. I had to go find the clients who would work with me, the ones who were interested in me expressing my opinion and my thoughts. Me as co-author.
SPEAKER_00:I needed to find interesting, even dangerous clients. But like I said, even then, I wasn't following my purpose, and I had to wake up from that. I remembered why I moved to New York City. And I wasn't following that.
SPEAKER_01:I wanted to become a poster designer. And I the the the the story is me constantly getting pulled out by distractions, pulled out of my purpose. So me as a poster designer at mid-30s is a whole nother story. So I will leave you here. Because I think there are there are many depression lessons here. And since this is called the right question, since the question is, how did I get my start? The answer is for Lari and everyone else. I didn't get my start. I made my start. I created it. I created it by listening to my heart, doing the work that I was meant to do. Trying to become the person that I was meant to be. You guys got this. Stay strong. Learn to listen to who you are. Learn to follow that voice. It's the only one that's right. I love ya. I trust you and I believe in you even when you don't. I'm James Victory. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for supporting this project. Adios.