There is this blogger I am following that I like a great deal. He is a minimalist. He quit his crappy corporate job to follow his passion which is to be a blogger and a fiction writer. I like the guy. The only thing is that I wonder how long it will be before lack of cash forces him back into working for a living.
This blogger is no different than many other creative types. These people are writers, musicians, painters, sculptors, or what have you. The thing they all have in common is a desire to make a living from doing the creative things they love to do. For the vast majority of those people, this is an unrealistic aspiration. It just isn't going to happen. Even people with large audiences struggle to make ends meet. It helps to be a minimalist, but in the end, artists starve. It is the nature of their work.
The reason artists starve is obvious. Art is cheap. For instance, I am one of what must be a billion bloggers. Blogging is fun and rewarding in many ways. Blogging can also be lucrative if you have heavy traffic and monetize through ads and merchandising. But for most bloggers, they toil in vain on their blogs while working a day job to make ends meet. You can build an audience, but it is doubtful that you will ever make a living from it.
The things people make a living from are fairly obvious. These are things done to meet people's needs. It could be cooking, cleaning, fixing cars, wiring houses, unclogging pipes, etc. People pay for these things. So, why do people pay top dollar for a plumber but not a sculptor? The reason is because plumbing services are scarce relative to demand.
Now, art sells for millions of dollars every year. A popular artist can become rich overnight in a way that no plumber can. The richest woman in the UK is author J.K. Rowling who once lived on the dole. But these instances of massive riches are rare. They are like winning the lottery. When I see a blogger quit his day job to write, it is like watching a guy give notice to his employer after purchasing a Powerball ticket. It could happen, but I am always going to bet that it doesn't.
The reason for this odd state of affairs has to do with the concept of value. Value is subjective. I can splatter paint on a canvas, and it is worth nothing. Jackson Pollock splattered paint on a canvas, and it is worth millions. Why is this? Value is determined by purely subjective criteria.
Art serves no direct utilitarian function. This is why plumbers can reliably earn a living while sculptors cannot. People need their toilets, their showers, and their sinks. They can live without their art. In times of need, art along with other luxuries are the first thing to go. This is because the supreme value for humans is not beauty or contemplation but survival. In order to achieve happiness, the most basic requirement is being alive. This requirement for being alive is what makes trades and medicine reliable ways to make money.
Creative types are strange because they don't care very much about money. Money merely serves the end of survival and perhaps the purchase of art supplies. Beyond that, it is worthless to them. They don't care. What matters most to them is creating things they think are valuable. Others may agree or disagree. The problem is that you need money to live. Work becomes a chore serving only the higher end of the art. This is why artists gain a reputation for being impractical, poor, and lazy. When I told you about the blogger who quit his day job, it made you cringe a bit I am willing to bet.
The problem as I see it is in making a distinction between plumbing and art. I believe both are valuable. I believe plumbing and the trades can be every bit as satisfying as putting a brush to canvas. Conversely, I believe if all you do with your life is unclog toilets that this is sad and one dimensional. We have put enmity between the two where none should exist. Plumbing is valuable but so is art. There is an aesthetic in everything we make and do.
Here's a wild idea. This shit is kinda crazy, but I am going to toss it out there. Why not be both plumber and artist? Why should it be exclusively one or the other? Why does our blogger friend have to quit working to write fiction and blog posts? Why must the mundane be abandoned in favor of the sublime? Why must the sublime be abandoned for the sake of the mundane?
This is why I admire and celebrate Renaissance types. They do it all. This would be the doctor who plays in a rock band on the weekends. This would be the coworker of mine who studies martial arts. This would be the other coworker who is a drummer. This would be me with this blog. We might consider all of this extracurricular creativity to be stupid and a waste. But when you see what is happening on the internet with blogs, Facebook, and YouTube, you see a creative class emerging that rivals that of the Renaissance. This creation comes from people opting to turn off the TV and spend a part of their free time making things. It is glorious.
The problem as I see it is that we have abdicated creative pursuits to a professional class of people who get paid way out of proportion to their efforts. This would be someone like J.K. Rowling who wrote Harry Potter on the dole. You don't need to be a billionaire to write awesome books. Yet, Rowling is a billionaire. Similarly, you don't need to be free from a job to create either. I am fairly prolific as a blogger while keeping down a day job, and I still manage to waste time and goof off.
I am always going to work. I'm not even interested in quitting even if circumstances allowed me to. I am also always going to create. This blog and my other projects will continue until I am dead. They have been far too rewarding to me to give them up even if they haven't earned me a penny. I work, and I write. I like doing both. They feed each other as well. My work pays my bills and gives me time to think. My writing makes me more than just some piece of shit earning a paycheck to blow on consumer goods.
I don't think artists need to starve. I imagine Vincent van Gogh could have supported himself just fine if he painted a few rooms or houses each week on the side instead of bumming off his brother Theo. The reason we have starving artists and boring plumbers is because we have bought the lie of specialization. That is it in a nutshell. This is just so stupid on so many levels. This is why we have neurosurgeons who can operate on your brain but can't understand the statements on their 401(k) accounts. This is why we have pretentious artists who would rather starve than sell out to the Man. The result is that people are only selectively smart while being generally stupid as fuck.
Be a Renaissance type. You can be an artist and not starve. You can be a plumber and still be interesting. And the best part is that you might get rich and happy from doing both. Eschew specialization and mix it up for a change. I think this is a better way to live.
0 comments:
Post a Comment