What does it take to be an artist?
Not a person-who-creates-art. We all know lots of those. I'm talking about a person-who-creates-art-for-a-living. We all know considerably less of those. So, what does it take to be a working artist?
That's the question I get over and over. From young people trying to figure out what the hell to do next. From older people trying to figure out what the hell to do now. After 8 years of making my sole income from music, I guess they think I have some kind of special insight into the music business. But that's just the thing: I don't.
Let me say that again. I am a working artist, and I have no special insights as to how to make a living as a musician. A college professor once told me:
"Being an artist is all about being backed into a corner and finding a way out of it."
At the time I was a struggling college student. Working a full-time job with a full course load, playing gigs at night and paying rent in Brooklyn. I've always been a compulsive artist. I can't help it. If life has me hurting, or joyous, or angry-I have to write a song about it. Happens whether I want to or not. It's just the way I make sense of the world.
So it struck a chord with me. I was perpetually backed into a corner. Sometimes it was called rent. Other times, tuition. More often than I care to remember, the corner was feeding myself. Looking back, it's hard to imagine a better training ground for an aspiring artist.
Making art is easy if you love it. The business end however is nothing but an endless maze of corners. The second we're out of one, we're in another. The industry, our circumstances, the gigs-they are always changing. It's like trying to rely upon the wind. Sometimes it can thrust you forward, other times there is nothing there at all. The trouble comes when we THINK we have it all figured out. We stop asking questions. We start assuming things will always be the same way. We begin living in absolutes. But what happens when we get backed into a corner, and our old methods don't work? Do we stay there forever? Is this where we live now? In some dumb corner like Baby in Dirty Dancing? NO. NOBODY PUTS BABY IN THE CORNER.
This is why knowing is bad. We in the arts are all Jon Snow. We know nothing. (Game of Thrones nerd, right here. No shame). Knowing nothing means asking questions. Asking questions means considering multiple perspectives. If we know nothing, everything is an experiment. If everything is an experiment, there is no failure. Only more data to consider as we contemplate our next move.
In music, the corner can be the next record, or a new tour van. Other times it's is too many bills and not enough gigs. On the worst days it's the will to get up and sing when all you feel like doing is laying down and giving up.
All you have when you are stuck in a corner is the ability to look at your skills and ask yourself questions about how those skills could get your ass out of that damn corner.
We make, and write, and do because there is nothing else in our arsenal. Then we find a way too sell it. In the street, a dive bar, a fancy venue, an art gallery, online, or on consignment in every little town you visit. It doesn't matter. The struggle is our muse, and the art is our salvation.
That's it. That's our secret. We make art and figure out how to sell it. Over and over and over. At the end of the day, I can't change the world, or the music industry for that matter. I can only change how I exist in it. I can only ask questions.
Winter is a mess of corners for a band like us.
So, we did what we always do.
We made a video for NPR's Tiny Desk Contest
Byrne had his first art show at Gallery 788 in Baltimore MD.
We block printed T Shirts
We booked shows to sell 'em at.
We did as much as we could,
and proudly set off in search of our next corner.
theartofmadeline
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