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Thursday
March 6, 2008

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this tool dedicated to pushing crap down your throat Jed sent me this link and like a fool I read it. Not only that, I posted the following comment (still pending approval as I write this). Still, it helped me crystallize a long-held belief which I only recently rediscovered as I've begun to work more and worry less...

In Walden, Thoreau writes: "I too had woven a kind of basket of a delicate texture, but I had not made it worth any one’s while to buy them. Yet not the less, in my case, did I think it worth my while to weave them, and instead of studying how to make it worth men’s while to buy my baskets, I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling them."

For an artist, art is that thing which simply must be done. I have experimented with a number of lifestyles and have schemed various schemes to make my art connect with money, but the result has always wasted my time and demeaned my art.

After 20 years of making art, what works best for me is doing the work without thought of consequence (neither money nor celebrity) and keeping the livelihood entirely separate.
 
It's possible to find deep satisfaction in a "day job."

I'm afraid there's a prevalent attitude that a job must be a chore to be escaped at earliest opp, which is why so many artists and wannabes dream of instant wealth--a mindset which results in much conformist art. They dream of the golden key which will unlock the door to a life of everlasting leisure.

a veritable gold-egg-laying goose, this  
In the meantime they dabble in get-rich-quick schemes and whittle down their art to the lowest common denominator.

Not everyone, of course. And not me. (OK, maybe once.) Least of all you.

But I suspect those people are out there--they might even be reading this article!--with dollar signs in their eyes and a hankering for making YOU their next True Fan....