Winding down...
The purpose of this blog was to facilitate your return to working after our semester and our lives were totally upended by the corona virus landing in the US. Given where we are in the semester, and where you are in your work, I think it’s time to wind it down.
You’re welcome (of course) to revisit what’s here and to make use of it, adapt it, respond to it, etc., to the extent that any of that is helpful to you.
In recent entries, I’ve been hoping to help you come to terms with the way in which this is your time, and there is ample time, still, for you to make your work as an artist.
It should be noted that almost every time is a shitty time to be an artist. When times are good, everyone else is making a lot of money and has a lot of opportunities and rent is high and the appeal of just going with the flow and getting a Real Job is very seductive and everyone is talking about Real Estate and Stock Investments and very few people care about art. And when times are bad, everyone else is ALSO trying to get the same lousy day jobs and the times are depressing and materials cost more than you have and people are at war and all anyone is talking about is getting a job and the planet is aging poorly and very few people care about art.
Significant art has mostly been made by individuals who are able to set all that aside and become captivated by what interests them about the world and to see a higher value in creating bohemian communities than in personal investments and, often, artists have set their own material comfort aside to have the time to pursue their dreams of making art. Sometimes some of these folks are rewarded with lavish fortunes and great fame but...not very often. And not very many of them.
People who work in show business and get paid pretty well for their work all the time work very hard for that privilege. They do pretty much whatever they are asked to do and they do it amazingly well and they do it amazingly well because it matters to them a very great deal, pretty much more than anything that people like their work. To the extent that they are ever happy, they are happy when they feel the applause, the adulation, and the awards. When these are missing, they are forlorn. Amazingly, there are thousands of people who want this life and they train every day to become excellent crafts-persons so that they can have a shot at show business success.
There is a bit of a middle ground, it should be noted. There are folks who find ways of creating lives for themselves that are meaningful and somewhat comfortable and also make art. For the most part, their art is made after they have done enough work in some other (or allied) field to pay their rent, their health insurance, etc. People own cars and have families and negotiate child care with their partners and form collectives to share babysitting responsibilities and don’t have as much time to make art as they wish they did but they still do it, even though it’s technically a hobby not a career. And these folks sometimes make beautiful work.
All of these are templates for lives. And there are others, for sure. But they are, in my experience, more likely variations on what I’ve written here than wholly new models.
The thing that I want to make sure that I leave here for you—and that I want you to be certain to understand before you leave the confines of the bubble that is(was) Bryn Mawr is how much drive it takes to make any of this work. There is a lot to overcome—every day—to be an artist in our time and, to be honest, in pretty much every time. There have been times, the downtown NYC scene in the 40s-70s for example, when there’s been an element of cool to the work. But people were still living with no hot water, buying painting supplies instead of meat, and living in un-heated loft spaces without access to health care and with zero hope of having anyone buy (or even show) their work. For maybe ten years.
There is no shame in deciding that this “profession” is not for you. There are no extra points for “nobility” if you do choose to pursue a career as an artist. And, of course, you can work as an artist for a number of years and then do something else. Or vice versa.
What there is is a lot of work to do. There’s a lot of work to have ideas for your projects. There’s a lot of work to keep yourself sharp in your practice as an artist. There’s a lot of diligent work to realize your projects in a way that is clear and accessible in the ways you do (or don’t) want it to be...for your audience. And there is a lot of work to do to make sure that the work you are making reflects your honest sense of who you are and what your world is. And, there’s the work of managing your career, of promoting yourself, of cultivating side gigs to pay the bills, and maintaining a sense of what is going on in your field (whether you like it or not). And being willing to do the work—several times in your life and maybe even more often—of totally reinventing everything about the way you approach your work, all your habits, giving up everything that had become a little easy to take up what is new and hard and fresh and terrifying. Because those transformations will be necessary, sometimes for internal reasons and sometimes because the world changes.
Can you do this? Sure you can. I don’t think there’s anything super-human about what artists do. In some ways it’s the must human-scaled, messy down-and-dirty way to live and make a living. It allows you to work with your whole self and it insists that you be honest with yourself and to let others see, to some extent, who you actually are.
And it’s exhilarating sometimes, particularly if you can scale down your sense of what you take to be exhilaration. If it can come from one honest moment in a rehearsal or a line that does just what you want it to, or cracking open the thing that you used to love and letting yourself fill with hope that you’ll be able to find the next move there ... then you’re on the road to a good life.
And it feels good to be a bohemian, to live outside the dominant culture, like a foreigner even in your native land. Weirdly, people who are NOT artists also crave this lifestyle. SO you may find good friends and romantic partners who share your values. And collaborators, too, if you want them or need them. And this is the promise, the excitement that attends setting off on a life in the arts.
But it would be a mistake to think that the excitement makes itself. Or that it sustains you. Or that it, on its own, makes you wake up every morning being excited about spending several hours working hard alone on something that no one else might ever see. And knowing there’s a decent chance that what you are making is shit and that you are 90% sure you will discard it—and making it anyway, just so you can see it. That sense of resilience, if that’s what we call it now, that’s something you have to be able to provide yourself. And you need to be able to muster it not just once a year or a couple times a semester when the chips are down...you kind of need to be in love with the idea of being able to do this almost every day.
If the ideas I’ve shared here didn’t work for you, that doesn’t mean you’re lost. There are other ideas. They are other paths. But this work, of being thrown off and needing to find your way back, this is what happens. It isn’t (fortunately) always a global pandemic that ruins your trajectory. It could be cut funding or an abandoning collaborator or a changed mind or a romantic breakup or a run of bad luck... but every project meets obstacles. And most endeavors meet obstacles that ought to be insurmountable, at least in terms of the resources and ideas that are already available. Almost always, artists are reinventing, changing direction, switching tactics, etc. We do this WAY MORE OFTEN than we make everything according to plan.
I look forward to continuing to see your work evolve—over the next few weeks and, if you choose to keep working, on into the future!
I remain, of course, available to you for consultation, as a sounding board, a respondent to work you want to share, etc. And I’ll “see you” at our regular zoom times. If you have questions about anything I’ve written here, I’m happy to discuss.
It’s been fun to make this blog. I hope it was helpful to some of you.
You’re welcome (of course) to revisit what’s here and to make use of it, adapt it, respond to it, etc., to the extent that any of that is helpful to you.
In recent entries, I’ve been hoping to help you come to terms with the way in which this is your time, and there is ample time, still, for you to make your work as an artist.
It should be noted that almost every time is a shitty time to be an artist. When times are good, everyone else is making a lot of money and has a lot of opportunities and rent is high and the appeal of just going with the flow and getting a Real Job is very seductive and everyone is talking about Real Estate and Stock Investments and very few people care about art. And when times are bad, everyone else is ALSO trying to get the same lousy day jobs and the times are depressing and materials cost more than you have and people are at war and all anyone is talking about is getting a job and the planet is aging poorly and very few people care about art.
Significant art has mostly been made by individuals who are able to set all that aside and become captivated by what interests them about the world and to see a higher value in creating bohemian communities than in personal investments and, often, artists have set their own material comfort aside to have the time to pursue their dreams of making art. Sometimes some of these folks are rewarded with lavish fortunes and great fame but...not very often. And not very many of them.
People who work in show business and get paid pretty well for their work all the time work very hard for that privilege. They do pretty much whatever they are asked to do and they do it amazingly well and they do it amazingly well because it matters to them a very great deal, pretty much more than anything that people like their work. To the extent that they are ever happy, they are happy when they feel the applause, the adulation, and the awards. When these are missing, they are forlorn. Amazingly, there are thousands of people who want this life and they train every day to become excellent crafts-persons so that they can have a shot at show business success.
There is a bit of a middle ground, it should be noted. There are folks who find ways of creating lives for themselves that are meaningful and somewhat comfortable and also make art. For the most part, their art is made after they have done enough work in some other (or allied) field to pay their rent, their health insurance, etc. People own cars and have families and negotiate child care with their partners and form collectives to share babysitting responsibilities and don’t have as much time to make art as they wish they did but they still do it, even though it’s technically a hobby not a career. And these folks sometimes make beautiful work.
All of these are templates for lives. And there are others, for sure. But they are, in my experience, more likely variations on what I’ve written here than wholly new models.
The thing that I want to make sure that I leave here for you—and that I want you to be certain to understand before you leave the confines of the bubble that is(was) Bryn Mawr is how much drive it takes to make any of this work. There is a lot to overcome—every day—to be an artist in our time and, to be honest, in pretty much every time. There have been times, the downtown NYC scene in the 40s-70s for example, when there’s been an element of cool to the work. But people were still living with no hot water, buying painting supplies instead of meat, and living in un-heated loft spaces without access to health care and with zero hope of having anyone buy (or even show) their work. For maybe ten years.
There is no shame in deciding that this “profession” is not for you. There are no extra points for “nobility” if you do choose to pursue a career as an artist. And, of course, you can work as an artist for a number of years and then do something else. Or vice versa.
What there is is a lot of work to do. There’s a lot of work to have ideas for your projects. There’s a lot of work to keep yourself sharp in your practice as an artist. There’s a lot of diligent work to realize your projects in a way that is clear and accessible in the ways you do (or don’t) want it to be...for your audience. And there is a lot of work to do to make sure that the work you are making reflects your honest sense of who you are and what your world is. And, there’s the work of managing your career, of promoting yourself, of cultivating side gigs to pay the bills, and maintaining a sense of what is going on in your field (whether you like it or not). And being willing to do the work—several times in your life and maybe even more often—of totally reinventing everything about the way you approach your work, all your habits, giving up everything that had become a little easy to take up what is new and hard and fresh and terrifying. Because those transformations will be necessary, sometimes for internal reasons and sometimes because the world changes.
Can you do this? Sure you can. I don’t think there’s anything super-human about what artists do. In some ways it’s the must human-scaled, messy down-and-dirty way to live and make a living. It allows you to work with your whole self and it insists that you be honest with yourself and to let others see, to some extent, who you actually are.
And it’s exhilarating sometimes, particularly if you can scale down your sense of what you take to be exhilaration. If it can come from one honest moment in a rehearsal or a line that does just what you want it to, or cracking open the thing that you used to love and letting yourself fill with hope that you’ll be able to find the next move there ... then you’re on the road to a good life.
And it feels good to be a bohemian, to live outside the dominant culture, like a foreigner even in your native land. Weirdly, people who are NOT artists also crave this lifestyle. SO you may find good friends and romantic partners who share your values. And collaborators, too, if you want them or need them. And this is the promise, the excitement that attends setting off on a life in the arts.
But it would be a mistake to think that the excitement makes itself. Or that it sustains you. Or that it, on its own, makes you wake up every morning being excited about spending several hours working hard alone on something that no one else might ever see. And knowing there’s a decent chance that what you are making is shit and that you are 90% sure you will discard it—and making it anyway, just so you can see it. That sense of resilience, if that’s what we call it now, that’s something you have to be able to provide yourself. And you need to be able to muster it not just once a year or a couple times a semester when the chips are down...you kind of need to be in love with the idea of being able to do this almost every day.
If the ideas I’ve shared here didn’t work for you, that doesn’t mean you’re lost. There are other ideas. They are other paths. But this work, of being thrown off and needing to find your way back, this is what happens. It isn’t (fortunately) always a global pandemic that ruins your trajectory. It could be cut funding or an abandoning collaborator or a changed mind or a romantic breakup or a run of bad luck... but every project meets obstacles. And most endeavors meet obstacles that ought to be insurmountable, at least in terms of the resources and ideas that are already available. Almost always, artists are reinventing, changing direction, switching tactics, etc. We do this WAY MORE OFTEN than we make everything according to plan.
I look forward to continuing to see your work evolve—over the next few weeks and, if you choose to keep working, on into the future!
I remain, of course, available to you for consultation, as a sounding board, a respondent to work you want to share, etc. And I’ll “see you” at our regular zoom times. If you have questions about anything I’ve written here, I’m happy to discuss.
It’s been fun to make this blog. I hope it was helpful to some of you.
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