(no subject)
Tora of Danger Field on art: (no italics/blockquotes because it's long)
As an artist I feel like I deal in a completely different currency. If we were to really count every little income and expense and average it out over our entire careers, we would probably (for me CERTAINLY) have earned well under the poverty line in terms of a weekly or monthly or yearly ‘income’. But thats because a monetary currency is not relevant to our cause. We don’t clock on ‘hours’ with ‘time cards’ because time is not constant or relevant for us either! My job when I work in theatre is to manipulate time and space, to bend and fracture everything we know and present it in a stylized form so that we might learn lessons from the stories we are telling…and when I think about it that way, how can I possibly fit that job (and myself) into an ‘approved’ social structure? I cannot. In a way, the only way I can possibly be paid, is if people pay me what they think I am worth.
There are those who think I am useless.
There are those feel they owe me their life.
There are those who are too proud to give (but take nonetheless).
And there are those who are generous.
Yes we do need to eat, but it also needs to be acknowledged that we work on a different system, but a system that runs parallel to the mainstream and is just as supported by it as it supports it, they feed each other. I put my hand into my pocket for the buskers because I know that we are all the same…and at the end of the day, if I really asked myself what it means to me - my favorite story, my favorite album, my favorite painting, my favorite movie, my favorite song - I can’t put a monetary value to it. It is truly priceless. And when we realize THAT, maybe we will start to be more generous towards artists.
As an artist I feel like I deal in a completely different currency. If we were to really count every little income and expense and average it out over our entire careers, we would probably (for me CERTAINLY) have earned well under the poverty line in terms of a weekly or monthly or yearly ‘income’. But thats because a monetary currency is not relevant to our cause. We don’t clock on ‘hours’ with ‘time cards’ because time is not constant or relevant for us either! My job when I work in theatre is to manipulate time and space, to bend and fracture everything we know and present it in a stylized form so that we might learn lessons from the stories we are telling…and when I think about it that way, how can I possibly fit that job (and myself) into an ‘approved’ social structure? I cannot. In a way, the only way I can possibly be paid, is if people pay me what they think I am worth.
There are those who think I am useless.
There are those feel they owe me their life.
There are those who are too proud to give (but take nonetheless).
And there are those who are generous.
Yes we do need to eat, but it also needs to be acknowledged that we work on a different system, but a system that runs parallel to the mainstream and is just as supported by it as it supports it, they feed each other. I put my hand into my pocket for the buskers because I know that we are all the same…and at the end of the day, if I really asked myself what it means to me - my favorite story, my favorite album, my favorite painting, my favorite movie, my favorite song - I can’t put a monetary value to it. It is truly priceless. And when we realize THAT, maybe we will start to be more generous towards artists.