Some years ago, I wrote a little note to myself called “Being an Artist in the Modern Culture”. Published April 20th, 2011, it still sits on my Facebook page. I include it here, because it is a place to launch into further observation.
Being an Artist in the Modern Culture
These are some personal observations on being an artist in 2011. You are welcome to share them with any struggling artist you know and love.
This is me in ballet at 5 or 6. Check out the bad-ass tights!
Art and Culture
Art is a product of culture. As humans began to grow food, the increase of leisure time this afforded members of the population allowed people to specialize in trades and crafts, developing language and politics, soldiers and artists.
Being a result of culture, all art is subject to the whims of commerce. The artist invests imagination and thought, emotion and insight, but above all the artist invests time. As a result, the artist relies upon their culture to support them. Without some level of support, the artist must set aside their vision in order to secure survival, or endanger their survival to achieve their vision.
Who feeds the Artists?
Historically, artists can be supported by the state, by business interests or through patronage.
Art that is funded by the state, and to a large extent by religious institutions, is commissioned to communicate concepts and emotions that support the approved social narratives of those institutions. Empires on the rise commission statutes of military leaders and warriors. Religious institutions commission works to exalt their Gods, Saints and martyrs. Kingdoms purchase paintings and jewelry to honor their monarchs.
In only minor contrast, art created by or for commercial entities may be commissioned to promote the ideals or identity of the institution or it may be the product of the institution, designed to be produced, packaged and distributed within the market place in exchange for remuneration.
Since all artists require support, this commercial model makes sense. Yet, if financial gain is the core value of the model (as opposed to those of state or religion above), the natural course of events creates a state in which the simplest tastes and most basic motivations within the market place are catered to in order to maximize profit. Combine this with the personal agendas of the merchants and merchandisers who manage investment in this commercial art, and the current market place comes into sharp focus: It can be described as the least common denominator for the highest possible profit.
Patronage can combine the best and worst of these influences. On the one hand it can allow an artist a level of freedom to explore their subject with abandon, and on the other they may find themselves entirely curtailed in their expression. In either event, they work with the knowledge that they are subject to the whims of the patron. A patron need not be an individual. It may be an organization like a school or some other form of collective, but the net result is the same.
And, both historically and currently, if you find yourself outside this model (where most artists start out) or if you have been excluded from this model for failure to cater to the desires of your financial backers, you are on your own.
The Struggle
Artists have struggled for as long as there has been art. The struggling artist has become an archetype unto itself, and is popularized within our modern mythology until the struggle has become the expectation. To be considered a serious artist one is expected to cut off body parts and live under a bridge in order to illustrate their dedication. Leading a relatively satisfying life means you lack the dedication required to be a true artist. The fact that this view is so popular is an indication of the level of dedication exhibited by those who pursue their dreams. The fact that it is the expectation is a shame.
Artists, if they have the good fortune to be supported by their efforts, can be labeled sell-outs even when they are true to their vision. This can contribute to that feeling of cynicism that many creative people seem to shroud themselves in.
The Net Impact – Free Art/Enslave the Artist
It has become part of the cultural norm for people to complain about art that they call crap. Mass produced, processed, sterilized and homogenized, auto tuned, spell checked and politically correct, much of what we see is no longer crafted to challenge us, but rather to titillate and pacify us like an animated fairy tale reinvented for toddlers, devoid of the elements of horror that the classic story captured. This is what the over-culture supports, this is how we are being asked to see things, so it follows that this is what we get.
Add to this the pervasive idea that “art should be free”. The information revolution has created an atmosphere in which all art, all creativity, all innovation belongs to the market place. In this climate artists who want to control their vision are forced to fend for themselves like good capitalists, but the majority of art has been socialized, stripping the artist of any reward for their efforts. People steal art without remorse or even thought. They have come to expect that the first taste is free, and every taste afterward should be free as well. Any artist who wants to be seen in the market place must play along.
And don’t let anyone catch you complaining about it. How quickly support and fandom can transform to animosity and loathing when an artists points out that the system is taking advantage of them in a painful manner. Ironically, artists are supposedly valued for their highly developed level of emotional sensitivity and an ability to communicate, but when that sensitivity incites communication that does not pander to certain fans, those fans become loud detractors. Detractors who can turn on you for asking for help, or for taking too long to finish a project (while you keep showing up at your day job to pay for it) or even for quitting when you’ve had enough.
How can an artist compete and survive in this landscape?
It’s been said that in a Democracy people get the government that they deserve. This may be true, depending on how much honesty abides within the public discourse. What I can say is that, in the capitalist anarchy of the information culture, people get the art they support. Allow me to say that again: People get the art they support.
If you love an artist, let them know. Drop them a note. Donate to their next project. Hell, buy them a cup of coffee. Money allows artists to work faster, and the more prolific an artist is, the more of their art you have to enjoy.
If you like an artist, clearly they have suffered enough to become an artist, through hard work, sacrifice and dedication. Destitution will not increase their talent. Starving artists do starve to death. Then, when they die young some business person will come along, buy up the rights, clean up anything they don’t like and package the rest for resale, shooting the cow and pasteurizing the last of the milk.
This is said in self-interest, pure and simple. I want to create art, and I need to eat. But if you like the art I create then it is in your best interest to support the creation of that art, because I do need to eat in order to make art.
Jon Sewell, April 20th, 2011”
CODA: The Artists and the Hustler
Re-reading this note with 8 more years of experience, I cannot say that much has changed in the creative landscape. There is still a prevailing myth that artists must suffer, still an expectation that art belongs to everyone, still a commercialization that can strip the edge from art in order to appeal to a broader audience, because everyone needs to eat.
What I can say has changed for me, in hindsight, is my relationship to marketing my art. Or what I call, the cultural expectation to be a hustler.
When I have spoken to people about The Rites of Eleusis, there is often a level of astonishment, especially among people working in legitimate theater. What we did “just isn’t done!” Nobody does anything like that! Seven musical plays as part of a single story released over 14 years? That’s huge.
And that is often followed up with “how did you pay for it?” or “how did you make any money?”
And the answer to that is: “We hustled”.
Hustle can have many meanings and not all of them are positive. Yes, we hustled in that we brought our best selves and our integrity and grit to this project to make a go of it. And yes, we hustled in that we did everything we could think of to get the money and talent together to make this happen.
For us, hustling meant crowd-funding (which feels like the internet equivalent of pan-handling), working extra jobs, bartering, borrowing, trying to sell merchandise, or program advertisements, or reaching out to corporate sponsors who might support our project, selling things to buy other things, finding any cheap work-around, applying for one of those grants you hear so much about, but never see, disappointing your loved ones on holidays and generally missing out on large swatches of your life, family and community in order to invest in this thing you love.
And the net result of the hustle? Well, for us it was never enough. Not even close.
We dug deep, and did it ourselves. And we compromised.
As proud as I am of what we accomplished, it was an order of magnitude removed from what we dreamed. As far as we came, it was less than half the distance. We imagined the production values one might see on Broadway or out of Hollywood, and pulled together what we could with everything we could hustle up. It could not help but seem comical, even to ourselves. We never had the resources to achieve grandeur, and so we learned to embrace camp.
And as artists, all this hustling hit us in a place where the impact could really do some damage. In a culture where value equals money, where you are standing on a street corner busking for change to cover the cost of your next run of t-shirts, every failure underscored the messages that we just aren’t good enough. I was never uncertain that art was worth doing, but there was a consistent sense that I was not worthy of doing it.
Art is a fragile process. Many people stop trying to make art because of something said to them by an instructor or family member when they are children. The desire to communicate in such a personal way takes great courage. Sharing art is the very essence of being vulnerable. You are opening yourself up, often to the worst of what humanity has to offer (have you read the YouTube comments?) and more-so, to the deafening ambivalence of a world too busy to notice.
So you hustle more. And the hustle takes the place of the art.
This blog started out as a hustle. We were finishing The Rite of Saturn, and I wanted to promote it. I did some research, read some books, and started thinking that maybe if I had a voice, a unique experience that I could share, that people would take an interest. That something I shared would “go viral”. And that I could use that platform to launch the final chapter of this project that has encompassed decades of my life. It became a place to process my feelings and share my stories and think about art and magick. Which was a healthy thing for me at the time, but I questioned it’s value, because it never caught on in the way I had imagined.
And there it is: the artist became the hustler. And when the hustle failed to meet my expectations, I silenced my own voice, because it wasn’t enough to draw the response I wanted. If the hustle wasn’t effective, that became an indictment of the art and the artist.
Looking at it now, maybe it wasn’t my artistic skills that were in question, although there is always room to grow, but my skills as a hustler. My heart was never in the hustle. The internet, for all of it’s promise, still looks like a million tiny flashing billboards to me. We share our stories, and create content so our families and friends can see them (edited for content, and subjected to inscrutable algorithms, obviously) and that content is homogenized and combined with endless streams of marketed products, polished entertainment and simplistic politics that are the big money players. The message from the platform is that the artists need to hustle. Make content. Be your genuine, amazing self. Put it out there. Play the game. You could be the next big thing! And the game takes time, and money, and risk, and every time you are expected to compromise and sell yourself, it takes a little piece of your soul.
Nevertheless, the Hustle Goes On
The producers of The Rite of Saturn, Melissa Holm, Bob Jones and I, decided that, rather than release Saturn to the public, we would enter it in film festivals. Which, if you have never done it, involves time. Filling out applications, trying to spin your words and promote your worth, and coming up with money for entry fees. Always more money.
We chose a dozen film festivals, mostly based upon their deadlines and sank the remaining money we had from Saturn ticket sales into entry fees. About $500.00.
And that is it. We wait. At the end of the long hustle, we have this: no money, a long shot at being seen, and the very real possibility that we will once again be left with the sense that we are not enough, that we were never enough.
This leads to the question: what is enough? What does enough look like? I guess there was always a dream, that someone with some level of power and influence would take up the cause. That, like John Waters, or Kevin Smith, or Sam Rami, we might be recognized in all our campy glory as some sort of creative force, and provided the opportunity to work in the field professionally, on a larger stage, with a real budget, and the opportunity to tell the full story, without so much compromise. But that isn’t what happened. This isn’t the fairy tale hustle of Pretty Woman. It feels more like Midnight Cowboy.
I don’t have a solution. But I know that hustling is not the answer, at least not for me. And every well meaning friend and supporter who suggests that we just hustle a little more is missing the point. At some point, the achievement no longer seems worth the hustle. The natural defense to feeling like your art is not worthy is to grow bitter, and decide that the world is not worthy of what you have created. You silence your voice to punish the world for not noticing, and the world fails to notice your silence. And this road leads to sadness, isolation, disconnection. I don’t want to end up in that place, so I have to decide not to go there.
That note I wrote at the top? That was my first attempt at being a hustler. The day I tried to convince myself that it was the smart way to go. And I was successful in convincing myself, for what it was worth. That date, April 20th, 2011? That was less than two months before the launch of our first Kickstarter campaign. I may not have been a great hustler, but I gave it my best effort. And over the years those efforts saw us through the process, to the end of the project. So in that, we succeeded. The hustle was adequate to the task.
Maybe I describe our fundraising and marketing as “hustling” because it never felt good. It never felt right. It feels like trying to convince someone to hold your hand who just doesn’t want to, but they do so begrudgingly. What could be joyful and warm starts feeling strained and dirty. That is the net result of the hustle. I cannot say I recommend it.
I have expressed much gratitude over the years, to our friends and supporters, and each and every expression was genuine. I worry that my post may indicate otherwise, and I would like to distance myself from that idea. I did not write this to express my ungratefulness, but rather, to open up a little about the hidden cost. And perhaps I have said enough about that.
For all the love and support we have been shown over the years, we are truly and deeply grateful. I share this so other artists might realize they are not alone in the struggle. I want to invite people to talk about the process, and what it does to the participants.