Modeling Creativity—Part 4
The success story
“Modeling Creativity” was written by John Vogel in conjunction with ParentSounds. Although it is broken into five parts due to length, we recommend reading it as one whole piece. Here are the previous parts: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 5.
Besides the very real fear of the ridicule we could incur by putting our art into the public, another aspect that adds to the dissuasion of making art is the expectation of accomplishment that has been fed to us by the inundation of success stories. The three main things I’d like to address about success stories is that they don’t represent the majority of experience, they often show a brief moment in a nonlinear trajectory, and they are manufactured in retrospect.
Not the Norm
It’s a bit obvious, but most artists do not make a living wage off of their art. A number that I’ve seen in a few places is that somewhere around 10% of artists make their living solely off of their art, which seems high to me. In any case, from interviews that I’ve done and through knowing many artists, writers, and people in bands, it’s rare to find artists who don’t have at least a secondary source of income. And the artists who do make their primary income from art often deal with a lot of economic insecurity.
I’ve also witnessed a tendency to overinflate the perceived income of an artist whom you’ve heard of if you’re looking from the outside. Just in my personal life, it’s been assumed by some younger audience members that we made our living as members of Grandchildren, when in fact we were rarely above breaking even on our overhead. When talking about this with the tour manager of Man Man, he mentioned that people sometimes assumed the members of the band must be millionaires, when in reality they were bringing in highly taxed teachers’ salaries and only during years of grueling tour schedules.
But even when you pull back and look at pretty famous artists, it’s very common for them to have other sources of income. Frequently, that comes in the form of teaching or speaking engagements, but much of the time it’s from something completely unrelated. Even with full-time artists, I often find that they spend more of their time on tasks related to the publicity and sale of their art than they do actually making art.
It’s Fleeting
An analogy that I think of when it comes to the transitory nature of success in the arts is the relationship between Aaron Freeman and Sarah as depicted in songs by Ween. As you go through their catalogue from Pure Guava to The Mollusk to White Pepper to Quebec (I realize I skipped Chocolate and Cheese, but that’s just because there’s no song on there that illustrates this point), you can see the ups and downs of the relationship through the songs. I have no corroborative evidence of this other than a little bit of background knowledge from friends and forums, but it seems like the following songs are probably about Sarah:
“Sarah”—love song, Pure Guava
“Push th’ Little Daisies”—love song, Pure Guava
“It’s Gonna Be (Alright)”—breakup song, The Mollusk
“Stay Forever”—love song, White Pepper
“I Don’t Want It”—breakup song, Quebec
If this were to be translated to the public coverage of an artistic career, you would be seeing only the love songs. After an artist goes through the promotional campaign of a popular work that’s receives wide media attention, they could just as easily follow that up with a piece of work that doesn’t get talked about at all. You don’t see headlines like “Writer’s follow-up book achieves surprisingly low numbers” or “Band plays to mostly empty clubs on this tour.”
There are very few representations out there of the fluctuating nature of artistic careers or that give space for feelings of failure. At Talking Writing, we talk about this a lot and make an honest attempt to create a safe space in which artists can be open about their perceived achievements and failures without worrying about how it will look from a promotional viewpoint. Other pieces that come to mind that touch on this with brutal honesty and care are the Metallica documentary, Some Kind of Monster; Jay Mumford’s (aka J-Zone) autobiography, Root for the Villain; and my own Weird Music.
In the intro of Root for the Villain, Mumford relays a story about being told by a publisher who rejected the book something along the lines of, “He’s got a great story, but nobody knows who he is, so nobody will care.”
By their investment in the comp system and the ways in which they choose what to publish, we know that publishers are rarely interested in originality or hard truths; they’re mostly trying to predict what will make them money. Choosing who’s on top is a good bet. And their thinking is probably correct: As audience members, we probably are more likely to want to hear the success story over a failure story. However, the surprise successes of artwork that business-minded people thought “wouldn’t sell” are proof of concept that that approach isn’t always correct and that those works have value.
Mumford is also a good example of the ups and downs of a musical career, and the unexpected success of Root for the Villain (self-published) is a good example of a piece of art that originally seemed unmarketable resonating with audiences. His initial rise in underground hip hop is essentially an underdog story about gaining traction as an independent artist, and the downfall from that rise is what he chronicles in Root for the Villain. But then, after the unexpected although transient success of his book, he taught himself drums and is now back at it as a composer and drummer in his band the Du-Rites as well as playing drums with other groups. So, depending on what frame you’re using, his story could fit into either the failure or success structure.
Manufactured in Retrospect
Many accounts of success are either read or intended as a guide to success. However, I think it’s important to highlight the fact that all success stories are told in retrospect. Because of this fact, you can pinpoint important moments in a progression to construct a narrative that logically depicts an ascension. Of course, it’s always best to include some adversity and dramatic tension, but still everything will point toward “making it.”
In reality, though, everyone’s life is full of tiny moments that could fall either way, and the ones in which they fall the right way are the stories we hear. The ones in which they fall the wrong way are rarely heard. We also hear only about the important moments that contribute to the narrative, not all the boring stuff that happens in between. When you’re living your life in real time, it’s almost impossible to recognize those moments or control their outcome in your favor. Even when people talk about their own success, it can seem to them more serendipitous than planned. Things just sort of click into place at a certain time, and something comes out of it. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t try or work hard, but the control you have might be pretty limited. Plus, everyone’s path is unique; what works for someone else might not work for you, so everyone has to figure it out on their own.
Now, I’m a sucker for these success stories, too. I’ve read or listened to the aforementioned On Writing many many times, and I tear up every time I get to the scene where the paperback rights for Carrie sold for $400,000. Another recent example that comes to mind is the ascension of Run the Jewels as told by El-P in What Had Happened Was.
The obvious effect of these stories is that they make us want the same thing: precipitous success. And their unbalanced ubiquity gives us the implicit message that if we do not attain that, then our craft is not worth doing. But I’m adamant that, for the mental health benefits alone, art is worth doing even if you achieve no success at all. Also, after analyzing stories of huge success, I’m not sure that it’s the best thing to be aiming for.
There’s an episode of the podcast Super Duty Tough Work entitled “Ten Things We Wish We Knew As New Artists” in which Blueprint and Illogic discuss how huge success isn’t everything we think it is. Illogic starts the section by saying, “The people on top talk about how lonely it is at the top. They’ve been saying it for years.” They continue with the following discussion:
Blueprint: People don’t understand that being on the top is not what they think it is. If you’re not ready for the resentment that comes along with the extra love, if you’re not ready for the responsibility that comes along with the success, it’s not gonna be fun. You wonder why these people who are super famous end up strung out on drugs and all of that.
Illogic: Right, or just lonely, committing suicide, doing all kind of crazy stuff. Because it’s crazy up there. It’s crazy up there in that stratosphere.
Blueprint: Yeah, it’s not what you think it is.
Illogic: Nah, it ain’t always heavenly cotton balls.
Blueprint: No. It’s kind of like a backstage. To us, backstage is this depressing, empty place we don’t like to kick it in. We just go there to take naps, and there’s nothing going on. But to the average fan, they’re like, “What’s going on backstage? Can I get backstage? Who’s backstage?” I’m like, “There’s nothing back there. That shit is empty.”
Go to Part 5.
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