Posted 10 years ago
“Aht” and other fluffy things.
rp from my fb jawn.
It’s late so here we go…
“This business is not for the faint of heart or thin of skin.” That is the harsh reality that I pass on to bright eyed students and once upon a time, standard job bearers that suffered through Promethean and Sisyphean torments who experience that “oh sh$t, i’m an artist” lightbulb that pops on to lend limelight to a future of what can be. As such, I try to never take the stance of the firmly jaded. I still believe that you can make a living via your art.
So the questions I ask the aforementioned proselytes are:
What is your definition of success?
Do you want to be a star?
Why do you do this?
Currently, do you rely solely on your art to pay you?
How soon do you want to make money?
The thing that hinders us are the definitions we place on ourselves or on others that we glean from society and our own upbringing. We ingest these morsels of judgement and then regurgitate them on command within our own psyche or upon the unwilling recipient of our frustrated tirades against none other than ourselves.
At the end of the day a good friend said to me “this isn’t show friends.” It’s all a business. Art is very fulfilling and can be very lucrative. What other industry allows you to get paid from things that are purely subjective. “ I have an idea about a movie, it’s space cowboys and droids….gimme 10 million dollars?” “ i have this kid who can sing, i mean to me they can sing and their cute…i need $200K and a marketing budget”. This is the barter of ideas and concepts, we deal in dreams and supposition wrapped around the enigma of “likeability” and an idea of what we determine is “good”. David Hasselhoff aka Knight Rider aka Money Making Mitch from Baywatch…is a singing star in Germany. No really… and you think you have no audience or you’re sad about a negative review or you didn’t get picked. AND? I mean i feel you we all want to be on the good team..or not. Some of us want to be on the quirky team of loners that mewl on the shoulders of the massive highway and ride the margins or even the holes beyond the margins..or not.
Take your own foot out of your own keyster and K.I.M (keep it moving). Making the move is the start, write as often as you can, honestly answer the questions above and be brutally honest. Lastly, stop being so serious about you, get out of your own head. You make stuff that other people wish they could make… (and with newer technologies they really do believe they are Aretha or Marvin). you’ve decided to just be, so go on and do that and stop rapping about it.
Seshat says it best…Make, Do.
One.
here’s a dose.
http://qn5music.bandcamp.com/track/over-there