Nebunele.com

It’s late and, believe it or not, I’m about to leave the house. But I have to write this down before I lose it. I just finished reading this article in the New York Times, called “What is Art For?”

The article is about a poet/essayist named Hyde who has some thoughtful things to say about intellectual property rights. And there’s something in what he says that resonates strongly with something that’s been growing in my own head for the past several years, which is a slightly different thought, which is: what if art *shouldn’t* make money?

If you’re an artist trying to be a working artist, there’s a little bit of heresy in this, because the people who work for free spoil it for the honest stiffs trying to make a living doing what they do, because why hire someone for money when this other dude will volunteer? And lots of us spent lots of money on our training, and the cultural perception of value gets all skewed when doctors make money and dancers don’t, when truly, truly, I will argue with you any day (and so would the dancer) that these functions are both equally, vitally important. But without a dollar sign attached to it, Americans especially have trouble coming to terms with that concept.

But the commercialization of theatre, in particular, is often the death of theatre. And I don’t know much about other genres of art, but I like how my buddy Dave Malloy puts this on his own website… it’s beautiful enough that I’m going to just quote it here.

remember, remember, when the artist was an anonymous drunkard, unwashed and unshaven, slaving over his sculptures in a bubonic haze, begging his dinner of meat on the bone, crusts and rotten cabbages, and in the moonlight sleeping with blossoming blushing barmaids on beds of stolen wine? and never ever once believing that he deserved anything more than this? that anything more was possible, or even desirable?

perhaps: artists dont actually, really deserve to be paid for their work, any more than the bleeding mother deserves payment for her just suddenly breathing child. what is nice and what is deserved, are just, not, the same.

take it! take it! take it!
i dont want it!

(this is the page on his site where a bunch of his music is available for free download.)

So, been talking to Claytie lately about theatre and how to make it part of the community again, because this is something that theatre still can do better than film (and for me the quest is always to distinguish those mediums, because theatre that’s trying to do what film does, but never as well, is just so pathetic to me, like tofu pretending to be turkey instead of glorying in its real tofu-iness.) And one of the things that’s drifted on and off our conversational radar is that the economy sucks right now, and it’s hitting theatres hard, and people think of live theatre as a luxury rather than an affordable necessity. And the idea has come up, once or twice, to drop the sham entirely. Ticket sales never cover more than a third of expenses anyway; why not just make every show pay-what-you-can, give it away for free to the audience who deserves it so much, and figure out the money on the back end, from donors and institutions who can afford to pay? Or just donate it all ourselves, out of our own damn pocket, because it’s better that way.

But I don’t know. Would an American audience feel okay about that? Or would they assume they were being fed something inferior, tossed a bone, a “free” prize that is inevitably a disappointing plastic piece of crap designed to sell boxes of cereal at inflated prices? Would people think it was valuable if we didn’t assign a value to it for them? Would they even come if they hadn’t committed some dollars to a pre-bought ticket?

Man, I dunno. But I recently read an article about the fine art auction houses like Sotheby’s being hit hard by the economic downturn, having to sell classic paintings by masters for a scant $15 million instead of the $30 million or whatever they deserve, and there’s some hopeful quote from a curater going “oh, I’m not too worried; I think people still recognize the value of these pieces.” and I just
feel
like
something
is
off.

What do you think?

Ready to beg my dinner of meat on the bone, crusts and rotten cabbages,
Alissa