The Meaning of Hunger

Sergio Cruz photo

Yet these days more and more artists are challenging the bohemian stance that artists should shun economic capital in favor of pursuing art for art’s sake. Artists and creative workers increasingly lick their low-income wounds publicly and vent about the elaborate dance of self-reinvention in the digital age. It’s become trendy to discuss and even quantify exactly how little money is being made from creative projects. Mathematics has never looked so hip.

These confessionals stem from a desire to raise awareness about artist livelihoods and draw attention to the contemporary challenges of earning a living from creative work. Stories like Grizzly Bear’s bring immediacy and detail to broad and harsh economic realities and can be vehicles for empathy, building bridges for the reader to commiserate with their fellow human.

To starve or not to starve.

Here is how it worked for me time after time.  I sat down with pen or crayons and tried to become an artist.  In the meantime I killed time and my soul (since regenerated) by going to dead-end jobs that did nothing for me but keep a roof over my head (most of the time). Occasionally, I had fun working these lousy jobs, more occasionally I avoided my art and drank and kept the good times flowing without being serious, because I didn't like serious. I had a family, but I fucked that up as well. Suddenly I was behind schedule.  I was like neither Henry Miller nor Picasso.  I was a lackadaisical wannabe, or so I seemed to myself and those brave enough to tell me to my face. Except on the inside I still felt like I could do something.  I've done something, though not nearly as much as I wanted to. It is what it is. There's a little time left, with luck.

X number of years.  X number of works.  X amount of love.

Then it all ends.


TS