I try not to look back too much on my previous writings. However cumbersome the footing, I prefer to keep moving forward like a punch-drunk latter-day Rocky Balboa. Because that’s how winning is done, if those films are to be believed.
But. There is something about last weeks essay that has been nagging at me. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed writing it, and people told me they enjoyed reading it. I’m an entertainer at heart, without shame or regret. Plus I think in attempting to attack the very idea of ‘content’ at its root I was able to get at something that many have intuited but have not been able to consciously articulate. So well done me.
But the nagging thing is this. I stated there that content is a transaction and art is an emanation of the spirit that is presented as gift. I stand by that. I think this sentiment is at the absolute heart of the matter.
And it deserves further exploration. It deserves more than a mere breeze-over while I was talking about other things in a blur of arrhythmic caffeine buzz and word-drunk riffing.
So if you’ll indulge me I am going to have a second bite of the cherry as I try to pin down the many coloured butterfly that is art, the opposite of that insect ‘content’
The Giving Of The Gift
‘The artist appeals to the part of out being... which is a gift and not an acquisition- and, therefore, more permanently enduring.’
Joseph Conrad
The boy with the pencil who draws faces and hands far more realistic and expressive than someone of his young years should be able to render. The young girl with the violin tucked beneath her chin, who plays melodies with a sensitivity and delicacy that speaks of emotions far beyond what a child of her years has had time enough to experience.
We call such children prodigies. We say that they have a gift.
And that word is not an accident. Though there may well be pushy parents and long locked-away evenings of practice, practice, practice (which the child will resent until they are accomplished enough to be thankful) such talent begins as a gift.
It is seemingly not of the child, or of this world even. And to the artist- if he is being honest- this is how it feels.
Though our culture may praise visible signs of strain and effort and ‘hustle’ (which shows that our collective imagination is now merely mercantile rather than aristocratic) the artist sees things differently. Though mastery of the craft is a task without end, there is this undeniable feeling when all is going well that the creator is merely an antennae or a conduit for some other capital C Creator.
‘Artists are stenographers of the muse,’ as my friend Cody Clarke likes to say.
And gift giving begets further gift giving. The artist receives ideas and impressions as gifts from the muses or the Gods or the universe or however you want to conceive of it, and then they in turn feel compelled to give away their creations in that self-same spirit.
Gratuity begets further gratuity, ideas beget further ideas, like the song they made us sing in school about love being like a magic penny. Give it away and you get more, but grasp it in a miserly hand and it will soon vanish all together.
And if you don’t buy into this high-falluting idea of art being conceived as a gift from on high, then I know that you have received art as a gift. I know that you as consumer- or perhaps imbiber or partaker would be better words- have experienced a piece of art and then had your day changed as a result.
Everyone has at some point come out of the dark of a matinee a little bit changed, with spirit lifted and senses heightened. The world as you walk to the bus stop now seeming a little different, a little transformed, as if the mirror of reality has been given a much needed polish.
And everyone has spent an afternoon in an art gallery, looking at say a Monet or a Cezanne and then later while walking through a botanical garden or along a riverbank has seen that same water and greenery with new eyes, picking up hues and patterns and plays of light that would otherwise have escaped your attention.
The gift gives a gift gives a gift. This is the mechanism.
But what happens when this flow of gratuity is distorted or interrupted?
Well, that’s an excellent question and I’m glad you asked it.
The Selling Of The Gift
What disrupts this gift giving mechanism of art is commodification. Art- whether taken in toto or in terms of any one particular piece- becomes merely a thing. No longer part of some collectively understood cultural commons, some bequeathment of truth and beauty from the once-living to the yet-to-be-born, art becomes just another thing in the marketplace.
And this, I fear, is a world we increasingly find ourselves in. Everything is for sale, everything, near enough, is now a part of the market economy.
To be clear, and to reiterate what I said last week- I think that the whole Starving Artist concept is a Romantic Lie. I for one, intend to get paid for my work. Art absolutely can be brought and sold. Art should be brought and sold. It’s a more socially beneficial and frankly cooler way to signal status than some mass-produced gadget or overhyped clothing stitched together by slaves.
But art is destroyed when it becomes pure commodity, when the gift giving aspect of it is sullied. And so this limits the scope of how mercantile you can be about the whole thing. Or that’s my position anyway.
See, the businessman’s frame of mind is all about the maximisation of resources, the squeezing out of maximum returns. You can’t do that with gifts, as any child who has read about the goose who lays the golden eggs will readily understand. You destroy the gift by trying to wring every last drop out of it. What the businessman sees as good sense the artist sees as death. Which is why many artists are poor and many businessmen seem to lack a certain finesse or discretion in life. The worldviews are different.
Art predates business, so we have to look further back in time to understand the gift economy that art rests on. The ideas of this gift economy are written all throughout myths and parables and fairytales. The one who selfishly holds on to the gift dies, the one who offers their gift with courage and without the expectation of anything in return flourishes. The art is an end in itself. The outcome cannot be forced or coerced.
‘Writing,’ E. B. white once said ‘Is an act of faith and not a trick of grammar.’ This applies to all mediums.
Acts of faith are gratuitous. Acting and giving without expectation is faiths definition. And faith doesn’t question. Or rather it is what exists once all of the doubting questions have ceased.
The Work And The Vocation
The exchanging of gifts and the market economy will always be in tension. This has been discussed without firm resolution since at least the time of Aristotle. And I doubt my brief survey today has proved much solution- it has merely sketched some impressions of the problem.
I feel the tension within myself of course. Daily. My mercantile self wants the validation of your money and enjoys the cut-and-thrust of marketing and positioning and compounding progress. My artistic self, meanwhile, lumbers on like the aforementioned Rocky- blinkered, oblivious, lost in a dream, barely conscious of anything but the daily task of giving the gift, such as it is.
The resolution, as far as I can tell, is to have both selves be separate. It’s a both/and rather than an either/or. The Mercantile Self does the work, does the job of writing ‘content’ such as what you are reading right now. He makes money from it.
And in doing so he protects and provides for the Artistic Self, that bruised palooka. And this way our masochistic but unbroken gift-giver can pursue the Vocation. He can endure. Because he can keep moving forward, blindly and purely. He can keep giving of himself with no regard for himself. And in art as in in life, if not necessarily in terms of worldly wealth, that’s how winning is done.
Until next time,
Live Well
Tom.
Great newsletter again Thomas, and a fitting complement to your previous one!
A few thoughts related;
I've known many "gifted" children in my time. How many of them managed to work upon their gift and transform it into something of substance? Not many. I've known many talented musicians who either stopped playing after a few years (because practice was taking too much time) or just kept themselves to their "repertoire" (comfort zone) and didn't wander into uncharted terrotitories, or even tried to write their own compositions. Even years later, you could always sense a little something was "off" with them. As if the child in them was still begging for that gift to express itself. I feel confortable saying this because I'm one of these persons. I was always writing stories and poems up until my young adult age when I left home to pursue "serious studies". Lack of time, interest in girls and whole new worlds opening to me made sure I kept that "gift" well hidden deep inside. But it never left. I could be in a bar with a girlfriend, or on holidays with friends, and I'd still catch myself writing sentences in my head when I saw something unusual or interesting around me. Seeing an old couple enter the restaurant and trying to write what their story could be in my head; watching a wave of fog slowly going down a hill and constructing all sorts of Lovecraftian possibilities around it. It truly never goes away. And I think I won't find peace until I let it express itself - one way or another.
"Which is why many artists are poor and many businessmen seem to lack a certain finesse or discretion in life. The worldviews are different."
I read I-don't-remember-where a very good article about what it takes to be a good movie producer. Most people think the producer is only here to write the checks and help put the movie team together. But it goes much further than that. A good movie producer is a rarity, a five-legged sheep that holds both the organizational and financials skills of an investor and the artistic sensibility of a creator. His role is not to tell the screenwriter, director and set photographer what to do, but to understand their vision and create the frame that will let it flourish. If the movie artists are bringing the raw materials to make gold, then the producer is the athanor in which they will pour them to eventually transmute all of it into gold.
But I agree, such sensibilities are rare...
Last point; I think you do the same, but when I like an author I tend to read his biography and put into context (and dates) his work. What I've noticed is that for most authors, their best work tends to happen just before they get recognized, but not however at the beggining of their career. Some would say it's because it was still "early work" but I think it's a little different; they usually produced their best content [ ;) ] when they were not totally starving anymore, and when they'd already received a little recognition (mostly within their own literary circles).
So, 1) when they were more "at ease" by not worrying anymore about how they would put food on the table tonight and 2) When the "and if" spark just ignited (meaning that for the first time, they KNEW their vision was possible, that it was not just a dream anymore).
And of course, once fame and financial retribution are there, we know how it usually goes...
Anyway, always a pleasure to read you Thomas, and have a Guiness in my name this month ;)
Excellent piece. Thank you