What's going on with art right now?

And the metaphor that brought me back to my soul

Art is weird right now.

And by art, I’m talking about any creative output.

Lindy West put it more succinctly and hilariously than I could in a recent Substack submission of her own:

Ugh, I can’t believe I had to live/work through the deaths of both print media AND online media and now possibly television and film too?? Can I just have a job?! Like, no offense to my beloved Butt News subscribers, but there’s no way that selling direct-to-consumer humorous movie reviews at a freelance tax rate and paying $600/month for my own insurance is a better system than being a full-time salaried staffer with benefits and a retirement plan and a cubicle I get to decorate with all my stuff! The gig economy is a cancer (which my insurance definitely does not cover!) and why are we not all in open revolt?!? Can you imagine suggesting in 1985 that instead of having multiple daily newspapers in every major city we should make readers subscribe directly to every individual writer they like? Hahahahahahah, very insane!!!

What used to be a pretty straightforward process (write or make something, put it out there, most likely for free but sometimes paid by an Wizard-Of-Oz-like corporate god) has gotten tangled up in a knot of monetizing, strikes, individual subscriptions, corporate greed, new social media platforms, and industries completely changing within weeks.

I’ve found it challenging enough to know how to put creative writing into the world in a non-monetized way, but the monetized way is completely wacky at the moment.

For the record, I too find the subscription model of Substack to be wacky!

There’s no way that any of us can afford to pay $5/month to access the work of all the writers, chefs, cartoonists, podcasters, sommeliers, banjo-players, ceramicists, inspirational-quote-calligraphers, historians, harmonicists, and circus clowns whose output we occasionally enjoy.

Everything is more expensive than ever (I bought a box of Band-Aids for $11 today) and if I paid to see the work of every creative being whose existence I appreciate, I wouldn’t be able to pay for that Band-Aid box til 2045! This is definitely not sustainable!!!!

But there’s a reason it’s been every-creative-for-themselves the past couple years: It’s really hard to make money right now!

Magazines and newspapers don’t pay much, book advances are declining like crazy (I just accepted an advance that was less than half the amount of my last one), TV and film writers are on strike, “influencing” is pretty much dead, and artwork on sale at the farmers’ market is passed by in favor of zucchini.

The vast majority (ALL??) of us never went into the creative arts for money. I’m laughing as I even write that because it seems so obvious (How many of you have had to answer ‘What are you going to do with that major?’)…but 86% of American kids have “social media star” on their list of dream jobs so I suppose I still have to make that clear!

But in this economy, anything you’re good at can earn you money. That seems all well and logical, but where it gets really tricky is when your Profession in the Ikigai model feels more accurately like Mission.

Capitalism is far too complex and interesting to blanket-blame, but I can comfortably say that our economy prizes a steady rhythm of individualistic grow-grow-grow without a balancing emphasis on integrity, concern for the environment, personal mission, and attentiveness to the collective as a whole.

Moreover, we’ve just survived a pandemic that altered every job, and we’re facing the beast of AI that will either take our work, or kill us all.

It’s feeling a wee bit stressful out here!

In the old days (5 years ago), a career pivot wouldn’t be as risky and expensive as it is now. We could decide to become a CPA with relatively low damage. These days, getting a CPA certification would set me back so far that Band-Aids would be a future luxury well past 2045. I’d be happy to get another job, I just don’t even know where to begin.

My fellow Creative Beings: It’s all so out of our control. We didn’t deserve this abrupt change, nor did anyone. We are all adjusting to our new experience on earth.

I’m a huge history lover, and I seek to always put our own era’s struggles in context of the ones that came before. Times have always been uncertain, of course. And life has never been fair.

Van Gogh made 2,000 paintings that never made it outside his apartment or asylum. No one was compensated for Stone Henge or Easter Island, or the gorgeous graffiti by my apartment. There are ways to make money from art, but it’s worth noting that some of our most beloved artists never saw a penny.

The economy frequently adjusts to what is valuable in society, and it sucks that art—that thing which helps us survive, make meaning, get through our hardest times of ultimate betrayal from the universe—has consistently been seen as not valuable in comparison to…whatever Finance Bros do.

Having a sustainable career in any creative industry often feels like a constant teeter-totter between reminding yourself why you do this all in the first place, and reminding yourself that your $900 health insurance bill is coming up.

And that teeter-totter feels even more extreme right now as the once-reliable jobs with a built-in community are disintegrating into all these individual hustles that feel out of alignment with a lot of our values.

It’s a lot!

Yet, strangely enough…I still think we’ll all be okay!!!

More than okay, actually.

Here’s why:

The past few years have been very challenging. And by that I mean, very confronting. I am in awe of what the WGA/SAG strike might accomplish for those who are devoted to living a creative life.

And I’m so excited whenever I see another artist leave social media and forge a path that is most true to their spirit. I throw a dance party every time I notice that some really weird art get mainstream recognition. And I get in touch with the longing that all humans still have for deeply iconic people who share their unabashedly odd selves.

I see now as a time when humans are really stepping up in defense of what it means to be human, from 2020 onward.

What might look radical to some is often decades of overdue anger: People fighting on behalf of their souls, on behalf of their purpose for existing on this planet. A smashed window or a work boycott symbolizes years of taking on too much and receiving too little. This is breathtaking to witness.

And, on a broader scale, the deepest part of me believes—no, KNOWS—that our Creativity will prevail every time, in every time.

My career coach gave me the most helpful metaphor for this: Your creativity is your garden. Humans are generative, art is generative, and both are infused with a desire for aliveness that can’t be squashed by AI unless it literally squashes us, which I guess is something to add to our list of worries.

Here are some uses of this metaphor when you’re feeling hopeless:

1. Putting your art on social media makes you feel confused and yucky? Perhaps, it’s because you once had a magical secret garden full of strange and whimsical creations you grew, and you’d let a few people in at a time who really appreciated what you were doing and understood why you were doing it.
   
   Then, some more people started coming in. And some would ask why you don’t grow this, and why you grew that, and asked if you’re watering them all correctly and told you that they know better. That didn’t feel great. Then, even more people started showing up, but this time they only wanted your garden space for an Instagrammable picnic. They tromped all over every living thing you’ve been tending, and then they left a ton of plastic cup litter all over the place, AND wrote a Yelp review about how your secret garden sucks. That definitely didn’t feel great. Why would you want to keep planting pear trees in this once-special space if the pears are criticized, stolen, then stomped on?
   
   It may help to close that gate again, and start tending to your garden just for you before allowing others to come in. Remember, your garden was your place of delight first, and you can always reclaim that.
   

2. Not consistent with your work?
   My career coach told me that I could create “seasonally,” meaning that I have rotating crops growing at the same farm. Sometimes it’s apples, sometimes it’s pumpkins, but it’s all from one farmer, and you’re gonna get what you get. Then there’s another model of always growing tomatoes year-round even when you have to bring them inside the greenhouse.
   
   Ultimately I realized I was the first type of farmer: I have this piece of land (my creative brain?) and it’s always going to come up with something different. The only constant is me and my perspective. Some day I’d like to write a curriculum for doctors so they can tend to the soul as well as the body, some day I want to write a book about the Book of Ecclesiastes, some day I want to start an organization that brings donkeys into nursing homes. It’s all different but it’s all me. No greenhouse required.
   

3. Scared that your creativity has an expiration date?
   One of the only consistent things in this world from the beginning of time is plants. All of us are hard-wired to survive, but plants are on another level. I am the single worst plant-keeper in the entire world, and yet my money tree is reaching her leaves to the heavens as we speak. Plants want to grow. It’s what they do. It’s who they are. Plants grew immediately after a catastrophic comet collide, an atomic bomb, a record-breaking wildfire, and my black thumb. Plants will be okay.
   
   Likewise, your creativity will be okay. I know it’s hard out there. I know that every industry is getting knocked out one by one, as though the economy is a terrible bowler. I know you’re not making much money this year (I’m projecting). I know it’s scary.
   
   But you are still a creative being, made from whatever fabric God is made of. You are here to make, be, do, shine, love, exert, write, stand up, paint, show, give, offer, bow. You are here to remind us all why we came here in the first place.
   
   Isn’t a seed so beautiful? A teeny tiny speck of potential, just waiting to become a hydrangea bush or palm tree. That’s you, baby. And no hurricane nor earthquake nor mass inflation can kill a seed that so desperately wants to be a plant. It’s going to happen.
   
   Rain will always come, and the sun will always shine, and there will always be a little spot of land just for you—whether it’s between the sidewalk cracks or in the garden of Versailles. You belong here as much as anyone—actually more so—because you are the one who reminds us why we love it here.
   

4. Worried that your art needs to be ultra popular in order to change the world?
   Something that drives me banana-crackers into rage is that we have way more than enough food in the world to feed every hungry person; we just find ways to keep it from the most vulnerable so reasons that I cannot bear to investigate.
   
   The fact that unhoused and needy people in my neighborhood ask for change outside a grocery store makes me sick to my stomach. We have so much, we give so little.
   
   Here’s when I think about creativity: The world needs your art. The world needs every creative person’s art. I believe that every person is a potential prophet, with a gift that can help heal the world, or at least one individual, who might as well be the world. There shouldn’t be barriers to this.
   
   I go to the farmers market once a week and buy lovingly-grown food from hardworking people who love the land, but I like thinking that some squirrels or badgers or ladybugs got to chomp on these plants before I did. Before art is sold, sometimes it’s consumed by “the least of these,” and I hope every artist joins me in feeling profound humility for the fact that people who can benefit most from our art most likely can’t afford our art.
   
   I often recall how transformative a line of poetry or song has been for me, and I couldn’t tell you who wrote it or where it’s from.
   
   Artists, let’s remember this: Nobody cares or remembers who you are, but what effect your work had on them: ladybug and lady alike.

In the Irish language, “ladybug” translates to “God’s little cow.” The funniest things will serve as inspiration for, us, yes? I was thinking about how cows are some of the most sensitive, personality-forward, loving animals, yet most of them are kept in meat or dairy factories, never to interact with any man or mouse.

I hope that us creative-types start seeing ourselves as beautiful cows with a whole garden before us. While folks might see us for their one need—milk! meat!—we are sensitive creatures capable of so much more, relationally, mentally, and emotionally.

No one product can define who we are or what we have to give, and we are so deserving of a tranquil life outside of what we have to offer. God’s little cows, we are, mooing our way toward a gentler earth.

If you’re a creative being right now who is confused, struggling, sighing, or surrendering, my heart is so with you. This isn’t how it’s supposed to be and you were made for so much more. I pray that you can find the ‘right’ people who need your message, and that anyone else’s opinions will slide off your back.

I’m rooting for you, I’m with you, I care about you, I am you, and let’s get through this weird-ass time like the prophets that we are: knowing there are golden days to come.