True Vocation
Jun. 6th, 2002 12:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gurdonarkTonight someone used the "ask seller a question" function on ebay to ask me if it is "really worth it" to sell my bad chess poetry book on line for an auction minimum of two cents. Leaving aside the ebay phenomenon that microscopic auction minimums can stimulate bidding and actually drive up price sometimes, I felt that my correpondent was making a good point. Is it ever really worth it to put one's creative work on sale?
I believe strongly that people can and should sell their art, music and literature, and that such sales ideally should take place in a small-business model independent of the corporate megaliths. I have no trouble with people wanting to be paid for sharing their work. As an owner of a small law firm, I certainly believe in the determined though ethical pursuit of profit.
The problem for me comes, though, when we define
the value of all our artistic activities in terms of *profit*. This takes two forms, both dangerous. One is the "I'm gonna be discovered and this big publishing company/well-connected gallery/record label will make me famous". The other, a bit less pernicious, runs something like "this cold, cruel, uncaring world has no real appreciation of the arts, otherwise talented people like me could make a living". In either case, one becomes a slave to the market, a slave to profit. Hell forbid that we create art as absurd acts of random joy. I may have been a free man in Paris, but now I need to be stroked by the starmaker machinery, or I am nothing.
That's why I feel that the arts should be avocational, hobby businesses and side pursuits. It's not that they aren't important--it's that they're too important to be tied to market forces and people who care only about profit. It's not worth it. It's worth far too much. I want to see more singing welders, novelizing horticulturalists, and nurses who read poetry at the Friday night open mike. This sort of thing is not merely a means to an end--a way to fame and profit. This is the end in and of itself: the destination is in the travel itself.
It's not that it's immoral to earn one's living from one's art. I know artists and writers I wish were marketers as well. It's just that the construct is fraught with peril that we will "get" what we have now--mega-corporate controlled media, artists punch pressed into the lowest common denominator, and this dynamic of the market v. the creator of art. A better construct, the artist as small business person, the Ani DiFranco or Trout Fishing in America construct, is alive but not as well as it should be.
The fault is not with the artists per se. The fault is how we all act as audiences. I buy major label and major press, and will always do so. But now I try to buy as much self-produced work by independent producers in the genres I like as I can find and enjoy.
Although marketing and small business are fun, it goes beyond merely "let's start smaller companies and put on a show!" thinking. I believe that we've got to break the whole construct and start pouring in new molds. That's why the 'net, including especially LiveJournal, media exchange such as postcardx, print on demand publishing, and cheap recording technology are so important. Ultimately, we have to earn our livings in other ways, and figure out ways to get our artistic expression(s) in the hands of others and get others' expressions in our own hands. This is the way of liberation from profit. The love of fame and
mammon may indeed be the root of all evil; for certain, though, the beginning of our destruction of this poisonous way of looking at the arts is to liberate ourselves from our fear of the self-published and self-promoted and try to exchange around the megalithic marketplace. It's not that I fear capitalism, in the way those misguided 60s theorists did. I just fear handcuffs upon our dreams.
I am not a "real" artist, and I'm not even sure I am "velveteen". I write bad poetry which I then enjoy marketing with kitschy ad copy on line. But all the fun in who I am and what I do would be gone if my work had to conform to some economic expectation and model, other than perhaps the model of spend little, have fun, and try to break even.
I'm not a particularly original thinker on all this, but I keep wanting people to realize that their true vocation is to write, and not to *write for profit*. What profits a person to fit a mold in order to publish her book, and lose her soul? Better 15 of the right readers, and artistic satisfaction, than 15,000, and "publishing expectations". I have a job, I do it well. But my dreams, however slight they are, are not owned by the daemons of profit. We are not called to lose our souls to gain a profit. We are called to lose our lives to gain our souls. If that means we are to hold jobs and write on the weekend, but write what we wish to say, then show me the clock to punch. The other way, lost in fitting expectations, that's the true hell.
I believe strongly that people can and should sell their art, music and literature, and that such sales ideally should take place in a small-business model independent of the corporate megaliths. I have no trouble with people wanting to be paid for sharing their work. As an owner of a small law firm, I certainly believe in the determined though ethical pursuit of profit.
The problem for me comes, though, when we define
the value of all our artistic activities in terms of *profit*. This takes two forms, both dangerous. One is the "I'm gonna be discovered and this big publishing company/well-connected gallery/record label will make me famous". The other, a bit less pernicious, runs something like "this cold, cruel, uncaring world has no real appreciation of the arts, otherwise talented people like me could make a living". In either case, one becomes a slave to the market, a slave to profit. Hell forbid that we create art as absurd acts of random joy. I may have been a free man in Paris, but now I need to be stroked by the starmaker machinery, or I am nothing.
That's why I feel that the arts should be avocational, hobby businesses and side pursuits. It's not that they aren't important--it's that they're too important to be tied to market forces and people who care only about profit. It's not worth it. It's worth far too much. I want to see more singing welders, novelizing horticulturalists, and nurses who read poetry at the Friday night open mike. This sort of thing is not merely a means to an end--a way to fame and profit. This is the end in and of itself: the destination is in the travel itself.
It's not that it's immoral to earn one's living from one's art. I know artists and writers I wish were marketers as well. It's just that the construct is fraught with peril that we will "get" what we have now--mega-corporate controlled media, artists punch pressed into the lowest common denominator, and this dynamic of the market v. the creator of art. A better construct, the artist as small business person, the Ani DiFranco or Trout Fishing in America construct, is alive but not as well as it should be.
The fault is not with the artists per se. The fault is how we all act as audiences. I buy major label and major press, and will always do so. But now I try to buy as much self-produced work by independent producers in the genres I like as I can find and enjoy.
Although marketing and small business are fun, it goes beyond merely "let's start smaller companies and put on a show!" thinking. I believe that we've got to break the whole construct and start pouring in new molds. That's why the 'net, including especially LiveJournal, media exchange such as postcardx, print on demand publishing, and cheap recording technology are so important. Ultimately, we have to earn our livings in other ways, and figure out ways to get our artistic expression(s) in the hands of others and get others' expressions in our own hands. This is the way of liberation from profit. The love of fame and
mammon may indeed be the root of all evil; for certain, though, the beginning of our destruction of this poisonous way of looking at the arts is to liberate ourselves from our fear of the self-published and self-promoted and try to exchange around the megalithic marketplace. It's not that I fear capitalism, in the way those misguided 60s theorists did. I just fear handcuffs upon our dreams.
I am not a "real" artist, and I'm not even sure I am "velveteen". I write bad poetry which I then enjoy marketing with kitschy ad copy on line. But all the fun in who I am and what I do would be gone if my work had to conform to some economic expectation and model, other than perhaps the model of spend little, have fun, and try to break even.
I'm not a particularly original thinker on all this, but I keep wanting people to realize that their true vocation is to write, and not to *write for profit*. What profits a person to fit a mold in order to publish her book, and lose her soul? Better 15 of the right readers, and artistic satisfaction, than 15,000, and "publishing expectations". I have a job, I do it well. But my dreams, however slight they are, are not owned by the daemons of profit. We are not called to lose our souls to gain a profit. We are called to lose our lives to gain our souls. If that means we are to hold jobs and write on the weekend, but write what we wish to say, then show me the clock to punch. The other way, lost in fitting expectations, that's the true hell.
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a bone to pick
Date: 2002-06-06 06:54 am (UTC)Re: a bone to pick
Date: 2002-06-06 07:18 am (UTC)As for that quote from Tom Sawyer...that is what happened to me and indie rock. I was only at Southern for 2 years (Mammoth for 2 also) when I got sick of it and turned back to only music made between 1955 and 1985.
Re: a bone to pick
Date: 2002-06-06 08:14 am (UTC)It's funny. I think the indies are the future, and yet
I have been unimpressed with their ability to "take the reins" so far.
Re: a bone to pick
Date: 2002-06-06 07:27 am (UTC)so I'm thinking disability (I actually qualify now that I've spent time in a mental hospital-- YAAAYYY!!)--and also I'm thinking the *grant route*-- I know that's a crap shoot but what the hell, I've got nothing to lose. The other alternative, which I've already proven I can do, and which was quite satisfying, is to start a small business of some creative sort-- I just haven't figured out what so far. Banning together with like minded people is very helpful in breaking free-- but I'm living proof you can do it all on your own too.
storefront
Date: 2002-06-06 08:08 am (UTC)sorting out the bones
Why "should it be" so that the creative arts "should be" avocational? Yes, people "should" be able to make a living at the things that they love. There's nothing wrong with that idea. This is how the world "should" be. The problem is that we don't live in a world in which there is an established order in which these things always happen. We live in a culture in which the business of creative work is handled on a mass-consumption, profit-centered basis. I don't believe that my view that we do live in such an economy is anything more than merely acknowledging what *is*. I'm for change. The change will be driven by lean, independent media resources. From the vantage point of the individual creator of art, the issue is how to deal with the fact that many wish to sell interesting creative stuff, but the market ain't buying most of it that much of it.
I know what it must be to be compelled from the very core to do one work thing, and then find oneself doing something else. My "things" are different, but the analogy is close enough to permit me an idea of the comparison. Must it always be the fate of writers and other creative folks to have to earn money at things other than their passion? I don't know. The past few hundred years certainly suggest it must for all but a very few.
The truisms do say something in this situation.
I'm not Anais Nin's biggest fan, but the reality of her publishing existence was that she independently
printed many of her works. Wasn't the first Jane Austen a private printing? How many of the poetry and literary journals soldier on with 1500 readers, most of them at library pricing, funded inadequately on grants?
As an aside, all hail academics who write about things nobody reads, to audiences of other academics.
It's so easy to just say "the public are all philistines", but I think that the truth is that this is just another grant-driven way to avoid "true connection".
The human situation is frustrating. That's not an exclusive province of the writer. The question is how can the writer best adapt his or her gift to the realities of the world in which s/he lives. In an earlier time, the means of production were so expensive and the possibility of marketing so forelorn, it was a moot point. Now anyone can write, anyone can market, anyone can find an audience.
The question is which lottery ticket to play.
Does one play the ticket in which 1 out of x,000 times
one might move beyond a short story here and a poem there AND sell a book AND have it sell enough copies to pay a living royalty AND have it true to one's own vision, or does one play the lottery ticket in which one holds down a job, saves money to fund small ventures, and remains to one's ownself true?
Of course, if one can get a nice advance and publish one's own work from a large corporation, that's fine.
Yes, it is agony to *know* one should be a writer or painter, when one is in fact stuck being a somethingelse. But one *is* a writer or painter,
whether one sells or not. My point, I suppose, is that the definition of whether one is doing something worthwhile is not defined by whether one makes a living at doing it.
It's not that I believe that all art is equal, or anything like that. It's not that I only buy 'zines or keep my television in the attic. It's just that
when things are as they are, one either withers or one deals with the challenges of one's own time.
The "shadows" come to each time in their own way,
with their own cool looking rocket ships. The question for each age is how to defeat them. In our time, I vote for print on demand, 'zines, and day jobs. I may be wrong, it may be horrible (fighting fascists always is), but it's my view.
I hate the "yes, but" way this sort of reply sounds, but I'll send it anyway, and just say it's not that I disagree with you so much as this is the facet of the jewel I see. As an aside, you know I think you're apt to be a "real" writer in the occupational sense someday, so maybe the analysis differs.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts and getting right down to the bone.
Re: sorting out the bones
Date: 2002-06-06 08:33 am (UTC)Your example of academics is a good one. That's the life. Somehow they manage to make a living doing something they are passionate about and that most of the rest of the world doesn't care about. Perhaps "artists" should take this as their model. I don't know. I'm not an academic (I don't have the ego) or an artist.
I don't believe "the public are all philistines." I do believe we're mostly too tired at the end of the day from working thankless jobs to be creative and appreciate whole-heartedly the creative efforts of others.
Yes, the realities of the human condition are frustrating. And I'm whiney. And you're right about the risk factor. If you want to be successful at anything (including creative endeavors) you have to take risks and make sacrifices. With creative endeavors I think you have to take riskier risks...Deciding which cards to play is what it's all about.
What should "should" mean?
Date: 2002-06-06 09:16 am (UTC)Good point re: too tired. But I guess that "create amidst the fatigue" is the card I'm advocating.
Funny you mention academia. That's what I "should" be doing. :)