What Really Matters (Art for Art Sake)?

By the end of this month, a few things might transpire in my topsy-turvyish little life. 1) I stay at a job that is making me feel increasingly miserable no matter how hard I try to see the bright side, and I then miss out on some really great opportunities as my soul slowly melts like an overly hydrated wicked witch of the west. 2) I find another, at least somewhat more palatable job, one which allows me to either start after or start and still take off for those "great opportunities" (one of which includes maybe playing a show), and quit my current job. Or 3) I find myself at a place where I must choose between leaving a job for aforementioned opportunities or staying at a job where it's okay to mislead your employees about their ability to take off for said opportunities as well as melting their souls on a daily basis. It's a statistical improbability that everyone hates their day job, right? Right?

All that to say I'm trying to get into a better situation—one which will not only allow me to continue to live under a roof but also free up time in the right places so I can continue recording and performing and writing my book and countless other creative endeavors. My current job (and most other entry-level jobs by their descriptions at least) require an elementary to early high school level education, and yet somehow the employment process makes it seem like I'm not qualified for any of them. I really hope all those folks in my "class" who graduate this coming May find themselves in a very different situation than the one I've been in. (If not, please know it is possible to drastically lower your middle class standards for what is an acceptable level of number of showers per month if necessary...2 maybe 3 sounds good.)

  

On another note, I've met a lot of fantastically talented songwriters in this town, but I've become to notice a trending dichotomy. There is this line between those that write as an art and those that write as a craft. The former shatter open a bottle of their inner most thoughts and feelings, pouring out an over-exposed, blurred mess of gut-wrenching, heart-squeezing, tear-jerking REAL set to music. The latter build a machine, cog by cog, with such finely tuned precision that it basically spits out radio play and awards to give itself. There have been a few throughout contemporary music history who have been able to bounce back and forth across this line, bringing handfuls of one side to the other. No one can traverse the tightrope all the way across that gorge, though (all that plays at my work is late 70s to today's pop music and I've yet to truly find correlation besides bipolar relationship issues). 

I'd almost rather have something real that rips my foot off and feeds it to me still raw and bleeding than a tin toy that timidly trots over and coaxes my toes into tapping. (alliteration overkill, oh well.)

A friend today asked me if the whole point really was to become rich and famous or to even be heard or if art for art sake could be enough. I used to think, used to hope that it could be. 

Back then I slept in my car for two months and was more creative than I'd been in years. Now I'm paying rent and hating my job and trying to find not just the time but the motivation to keep creating. After a long day of work, it seems almost impossible to crank out the same level of material that I made when my life was either so taken care of or so desperate that I couldn't or didn't have to worry about much. Growing up or in school or when I was just roaming, the art was all I had. Now, all I have is getting through the day... adulthood, by some definitions. 

I still believe art for art sake should be enough. I still strive to be someone who creates out of the deep, honest places in my soul, because that's just who I am. But then I gotta pay rent, and I gotta eat, and I gotta this and that. You know the propaganda. 

All I can think, though, is what's the point if what you gotta do to keep living takes away what makes your life worth living?