Is it too late to start a band at 45? (Salon)
You might need to click through the Salon Site Pass rigamarole to get to it, but this letter and response are surprisingly earnest. “Lost in Portland” does lapse into grandiosity, and many of the comments call him on perceived immaturity. But let’s be honest: a bit of ego is intrinsic to the artistic endeavor, and it’s hard to be mature when one is seriously depressed and alienated. Whether or not you relate to “Lost in Portland,” this exchange is relevant to anyone who has contemplated a career in the arts – and anyone familiar with the creakings of the “inner machinery of self-defeat”.
Here’s part.
“Lost in Portland”:
I have worked jobs, such as in retail, the restaurant industry and business offices, that have left me bored, unfulfilled and feeling like my soul has been crushed. On the side, I have done creative things: singing in bands, performing in local theater, putting together and performing with comedy troupes. These things kept me alive and interested in the world, but never paid the rent. I tried studying some of my creative interests in a university setting, but honestly don’t feel I could be happy teaching. . . So my current dilemma? I am tired of being unhappy and not being myself.
Cary Tennis:
How do you and I, with our myriad difficulties and lack of understanding, our lack of connections and affability, our inner machinery of self-defeat, how do we reconcile this? How do we reconcile creativity with the practical requirements of living?
To be blunt: Maybe we do and maybe we don’t. But we start by being honest. We start with a self-correcting catechism of ego deflation: The world doesn’t owe us a living. Instead, we owe the world. We have been entrusted with something.
Up until a few months ago, I was on the (unpaid but donating) staff of a non-profit artspace in Atlanta. My favorite job, after curating, was tending bar at openings. Most of my customers were artists, and many of them lamented their sputtering, debt-plagued, and worst of all unpublicized art careers. They groused about the lack of city, county, state, and federal support. They belittled the handful of local critics for being either squares or trend-chasers. They hit the roof when discussing gentrification, which they perceived as a conspiracy of people their age who had majored in finance (bad) instead of painting (good) and were now determined to chase their impoverished moral superiors out of town. What drove this sense of thwarted entitlement was usually the inability to imagine some third path between having their souls crushed for 40 hrs./wk. or supporting themselves entirely by their truest work. This binary thinking is a great set-up for self-defeat.
I wish I’d come across this blog and this post back when I sat behind that bar. I’d’ve given out the URLs for both the Salon exchange (Cary Tennis said it all so clean) and Bioephemera with every PBR I proffered. Yes, we’d all love to do our art and get paid. But most of us, including many of the best of us, won’t be granted that wish. So what you do is find something meaningful to do for a living–something you can care about, something that can inform and enlarge your art (and vice versa). It’s not just a choice between waiting tables until you’re too tired to paint or selling McMansions, turning off your heart, and trancing out in front of the TV. It’s a choice about whether you want to join with most of society and not consider yourself a real artist unless you’re paying all your bills with the checks from your dealer/publisher/record label/whatever. Swallowing that lie–perpetuated just as often by artists as by anyone else–will choke you silent.