starving artists — anguished historians
The mizzus said to me the other night, fed up and frustrated by folks’ disinterest in History, she was thinking of taking up pottery. She’s invested 30 years down at the Stanwoodopolis Hysterical Society and she feels like she’s swimming against an outgoing tide and no longer seeing shore. I know the feeling, but instead of helpful advice, consoling warbles or another pep talk, I said ‘Pottery? You think art will be any easier??”
I spoze she could make useful items. Make them aesthetically pleasing and add another cultural layer to the nettle farm here. Maybe sell a few downtown when the house and gardens are cluttered, barter with the neighbors, eventually market to the nurseries and galleries, set up the website and the advertising strategies, sell local and then watch Chinese imports undercut her beyond even paying for her clay.
Most folks don’t value what she does or what she might want to do. They don’t value artists or their art, history or historians, writers or literature, musicians or their songs. Folks who hope to make a living that way won’t. Nine times out of ten. Maybe 99 times out of 100. I could bitch and moan — and oh, baby, I do! — but to what avail?
The trick in life is to do what you love. If you need to make money too, good luck to ya. This society values money. Winners. American Idol or the NBA. You love history, you are one of the lucky few, however. Most people never find one damn thing they can be passionate about. That’s why we invented television and You-Tube. They don’t have anything better to do, nothing that fills their void with passion or joy or the sheer love of that thing that possesses them.
But the people who make music, who write poetry, who tell our histories, who make art, who dance and sing and celebrate, ask them if they needed to be paid to do it. Ask them if money was the reason. They do it to sing, to dance, to paint, to tell stories, to remember history. They are, without a doubt, the richest people on the planet. Starving artists? I don’t think so — they breathe the very air for food.
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