Some interesting comments were made to my more on the dole post. Thanks for all the comments, I’m really enjoying the discussion, and hope you are too.
TGD:
The dole is supposed to be a safety net to stop new zealanders from starving to death on the street. Using the dole to support a music career os to admit that the music you make has so little appeal to the populace that no one would pay for it.
No. Have you ever had anything to do with the New Zealand music industry? There’s not the population here to financially support musicians. Rhombus, or the Black Seeds, who are as close as New Zealand gets to pop stars, are barely breaking even.
I do believe that via the internet, if I promote properly, people will be willing to to pay money to me for various musical services (eg, playing live, or ideas, or fan-type merchandise, or commissions) if not to buy my music per se (the idea of recorded music as a commodity is silly anyway), but there’s a five year gap between there being enough people knowing about me to support me and where I am now. Given as how music is not something that it is easy to find financiers for — imagine convincing investors to buy futures for the output and popularity of an experimental musician — I need some way of doing it.
Social welfare is supposed to be about that — the welfare of society. I claim that music is a social benefit, and by using the dole to support me while I gain my footing, society in the long term will benefit, indirectly or otherwise. There’s lots of talk about Wellington as the ‘Creative Capital’ but what’s not often mentioned is that there are multiple levels of ‘creativity’ going on. There are businesses that pay lip service to creativity in the context of coming up with new ways to make money. Then there are creative industries (design the obvious example). Then there are commercial/established artists, making comfortable work that people will pay a lot for. Then there are the struggling artists, those making some money but relying mostly on the dole. Then there are those who reject any and everything, refuse to have anything to do with art industry or selling their art, refuse to market or promote, refuse basically to have anything to do with being financially successful. I strongly believe that each layer needs the layer beneath it as inspiration. Even if the very ‘bottom’ make no direct economic impact the very fact that they exist means their ideas spread (as they’re typically uniquely social creatures) to the more conventional layers above them. Innovation is driven by crazy ideas, crazy ideas tend to come from bored people who have no ‘real’ job but like to throw paint at things for no good reason.
And as a corollary to that, what’s currently one of the most profitable system of cultural icons we have? Hip-hop culture. Where did hip-hop culture come from? Impoverished (ie social welfare-receiving) black oppressed people. Orson Welles spent a number of years living in poverty before he became a famous novelist, and largely became a famous novelist because he spent years living in poverty. Why did western culture develop? Because we built ourselves up to a position where people could afford to sit around and think about stuff for hoursa day. Culture comes from people with lots of time on their hands. Who are those people today? They’re the people on the dole. We’re the ones with the time on our hands to sit around and think about the way the world is heading. Antiglobalisation and anticorporate movements grew out of groups of dolebludgers. It’s always been this way.
We create culture.
I put it to you that your dream obviously doesn’t inspire you much if you can’t use the remaining 128 hours in a week to make your dream happen without relying on others to unwillingly fund you.
That’s 128 hours if you don’t sleep, eat, wash, or live. Being a musician is a much more than full time job, if you’re to do it properly. If you don’t do it properly, ie, if you don’t devote 60-80 hours a week to it, then you’re never going to be able to do it as well as if you actually devoted yourself to it, and that means that you are going to miss out and more importantly your audience is going to miss out.
Sol:
I agree with TGD. I know who I am, and I personally find working a 40 hour gives you the freedom of going home and five and having that time to yourself, with the resources (ie; money) to do your discovery.
One of the things about being a musician is that you can’t use money as a resource. The only thing that allows you to increase your musicality is time. Where do you buy the ability to listen? Which shop do the amazing conversations with intensely creative people come from? Who will sell you the idea that life is beautiful? Where can you purchase a sense of spiritual/emotional/social completeness, the belief that, despite what most marketing departments want you to believe, your life actually is complete, without needing the purchase of their product or service?
Of course, I make a very careful and determined effort not to take my work home with me.
That’s the thing about being a musician. It never stops. It’s not a job, it’s a way of being. But tip that on its head — being a sucessful businessperson is something that never stops either. Successful businesspeople never stop thinking about ways to improve the way they do business – literally, the way they perform actions. CEOs work very long hours and are very good at what they do for this very reason. If I’m to be a successful musician I have to treat my music-making ‘business’ as though I’m it’s CEO, while at the same time being certain to keep the musical part of it alive. This means giving CEOness, business management, and planning a musical perspective. If it is important to my musicianship to hang out with musicians spontaneously I have to somehow write a business plan and a time budget which allows me the freedom to do this. I know I can, because I’ve done it.
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