How the hell do they pay the rent?
Artists, musicians, writers.... how do they pay the rent while they are creating stuff?
I was listening to NPR on my way to the Post Office the other day. It is only a two mile drive down the road, so I didn’t catch much of the interview… well, two miles there, two miles back, with a short trip into the post office to get my mail.
Yes, despite the best efforts of our current Postmaster General, Louis DeJoy, the US Mail is still flowing, albeit less frequently and less reliably, but still flowing. You can send me money, a greeting card festooned with glitter or even a hand-written letter. I’ll still get it.
Probably.
That’s really not the point of the ramble, but it is part of it. Everything is political and don’t let anyone tell you it ain’t. Our lives are dented and advanced by the whims of elected and appointed officials who are more intent on ruling than governing us. I’ll die on that hill.
Where was I… Oh, yeah… the interview. I don’t know who they were interviewing, but it doesn’t much matter. It was a musician who decided to use the pandemic lockdown to focus on who she was and write a tome … catalog? … I don’t know what you call a body of musical work and I’m too lazy to google it. Feel free to educate me. If you are curious about who the musical artist was, it was a Saturday (Feb 27) morning run, about 10:00am ET, WYSO in Dayton, Ohio. The NPR website makes it almost impossible to find shows that were previously broadcast.
I’m drifting all over the place, but if you are a regular reader, you know that about me and I won’t apologize for it. I’ll assume you are still here with me. There is, however, no extra credit or points to earn. Don’t grade-grub.
I’m semi-obsessed with Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own. In the work, there is an oft-cited quote by people who forget the first part was about having the money to pay the rent. It is about the freedom an artist needs to not have to worry about losing the space they need to create. The romantic sounds wonderful to creative people; the practical, not so much. So, it is conveniently forgotten. But capitalism never forgets. If you don’t pay for your space, the landlord evicts you and the pawn broker gets your guitar and your typewriter.
When I embark on a creative project, I want to be done. I want the video edited, the book published, the song recorded, the software program to be launched. I struggle to learn the chords, to craft the sentences, to refine the Bézier curves and the marketing messaging, the UX/UI. Even now, as I write this … essay … thing … you are reading, I just want to be done and publish it. But if I did that now, you would miss out on the next paragraph, as well as the previous one which I did not write until I finished getting this one out of my noggin.
I clearly did not hit publish when I told you I wanted to, because you are reading this paragraph… WAIT, DON’T GO!! … I know you wanted to.
Intellectually, I know that every creative project is broken up into smaller chunks of effort. Every software program goes through the wireframe, then the thinking, then the initial code to make the basics work, then the guard clauses to keep the person using it from wandering into places they shouldn’t go, then the sweating over one pixel here and one pixel there on the website or app. Emotionally, though, I’m already done.
So back to my original quandary; how do artists pay the rent while they find the time to retreat into the space they need to create the thing they need to create?
“One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well,” which is my way of saying I have run out of words and can’t do much more without breakfast. Yes, this was all tapped out in an empty stomach, so please forgive the quality of my ramblings. A pastry, coffee, some sunshine that has just now broken from behind the clouds and a warm puppy will now soothe my angst.
Well, these things will, at least, try.