Will success destroy us?
Today, I came across an excellent video entitled "Why Creative Success Destroys People". It's a sober look at globally successful Western artists and the spiritual cost of selling your art.
Some might call making your art marketable "selling out". If you can say that, you are lucky. The reality we have to face is that paper currency is our only tool for food. We are not yet able to grow our own sustenance just yet, so we must engage in commerce to eat. There were many nights where I cursed the necessity for food, wishing to banish this weakness known as hunger.
Building this space was meant to provide creatives the security and freedom to make their art. We call it a home because it is shelter for those who need it, and as artists with unstable financials, we have to make this work. Failure is not an option because it dared to dream big. Sharing it with others was it's birth and growth. It's still a baby, barely a year that it's been made public, and I (Nikki) particularly fear how we could keep it going when art itself was always seen as an unstable profession. RM and I have both tried taking on other jobs, but working in an environment that did not align with our creative souls pulverized us, making life seem bleak and unworthy of living. A very dramatic way to put it, as my business father and those like him would say, but those who know the true joys of creating would understand why this is the case.
We also understand how lucky we are to even have the opportunity to pursue this endeavor. Many more in this nation suffer as the poster children for poverty, and we are reminded of it daily when we see those who lay on the hard concrete outside the bakery, eyes glazed and pleading for kindness. It rends the heart in the only way a place with such wealth disparity exists.
People can argue that art is useless. I remember a short comic about a woman who decides to go into medicine instead of art school because she believed she could save a dying person on a plane that way. That was years ago, and I hope she is doing well as a doctor.
I believe art also gives life to people. You see it in the way it makes people light up, and I'm not talking about simply paintings on a wall. It's the movies we love, the music we cry to, the books we immerse in, the aesthetics we claim as self-expression. It wakes people up, communicates important messages when words fail us. It pushes people into action because it touches on the rage we feel.
Art is not simply the white wall gallery with wealthy collectors; it is the mirror which we fashion ourselves, creating more possibilities and perspectives than the status quo. It is the vehicle of our legacies. It carries our histories and cultures through time: from our ancestors, to us, to our descendants (assuming one would choose to have them in this dire economy).
Being successful in our art and enterprise is non-negotiable if we want to survive, but perhaps we can negotiate the definition of success beyond the usual measures this era has for it.
