Tuesday, September 16, 2008

O. Henry was a bank teller

While doing my daily perusal of job posting sites, I found an entry-level nonprofit position, which felt a little like coming across a 1965 silver dime (except I can't sell the job posting to a collector for $9000+. What a sad life I lead). A friend of mine also put in a good word for me with a few of her friends who are managers at local restaurants, so hopefully I'll be bossing around volunteers or busing around dirty dishes relatively soon.

I've been thinking lately about the dreaded Day Job. I write, I act, I help to run a con-- not things that usually pay the bills. And it hurts, a little; I wish I could forge my life completely on my own terms, and not have to worry about whether or not my manager thinks I'm a team player.

However, making your art your day job is problematic. Your dreams become product, your audience becomes a customer base. There has to be a compromise between the artist's vision and what the audience is willing to consume (and what the producer/publishing house/venue is willing to put their name on). I'm not saying that full-time professional artists lack integrity, but there is the lack of the ability to say to a largely critical public, "Go fuck yourself, I don't need you" without the likelihood of completely ruining everything you've built up.

Then there's the issue of fame. How many people have to approve of what you do before you're satisfied that it's successful? I seem to recall reading something that Stephen King wrote (I think it's in On Writing) where he says that he writes primarily for his wife Tabitha, but I'm sure the millions of fans are a nice fringe benefit (and have some sway over his creative process).

It is so desirable, so lovely, to have what you do mean something, really mean something, to someone you've never met. And yet to let something you've created float off into the unknown fog of the minds of other people is a scary prospect, and I imagine requires a healthy lack of ego. Nobody is ever going to see what you've made in the same way that you have, and you're certainly not going to have more than a ten page introduction or an occasional magazine interview to explain to the world that your protagonist is based on a dream you had where the president was a closeted homosexual and this is the kind of person you imagine his press secretary would be, even though the novel takes place in Kyoto during the Tokugawa shogunate. When I would write critical essays for the English courses I took in college, I often imagined the author standing next to me, reading over my shoulder. More often than not, their reaction was along the lines of, "Are you fucking kidding me?"

It still doesn't change the pit I feel in my stomach when filling out applications for retail stores and restaurants, but at least we can all be miserable together.

No comments: