Making Art and Making a Living by Mason Currey has soundtrack'd my walks this week. A book title to attract me if there ever was one, given my too-many-to-count creative side hustles.
Currey investigates the variety of ways creatives have kept the lights on. Family money, patrons, teaching, day jobs, government assistance, strategic marriages, and plenty of mooching.
You should know by now I'm not interested in being the poor, starving artist. I've got a family to feed. I sold out a long time ago.
Music production led to music licensing, which eventually led me to making YouTube vids about making sample libraries. None of that was a plan I copied from anyone. It was survival. The next obvious move.
The book traces a few hundred years of artists trying to stay afloat. For most, the road was tough. Plenty of drinking, bankruptcy, and dying young.
Van Gogh was paid a salary by his brother. More like an allowance.
Others took miserable day jobs. Some stole their way to financial stability. A few made as much money as possible from 8 to 5 in order to bankroll their evening and weekend obsessions.
At times, while reading, I felt as if I had very little in common with the subjects of the book. Mostly because I've never had a wealthy patron deposit a few thousand dollars into my bank account every month.
Yet I was comforted by the diversity of paths and destinations in the stories of the men and women who share the call to create.
Copying someone else's path is a fool's errand. My circumstances are my own. But it's becoming clear that the only shot I have at sustaining a life in music is to take my experiences, my interests, my skills, combined with the relationships I've made along the way, and piece them into something that's uniquely mine.
So, for now, I'll tell myself to relax. Make what only I can make, then share it with all of you.