the philosophy of movement
Arts, as they descend into entertainment, cling to seriousness and sadness as a means of validation. This leads to dismissal of humor as less valid because it highlights the lack of valence of the performing arts as affecting any real change.
Descend into entertainment can also be read as becoming a commodity; appropriated by the capitalist market.
Hot off the mental press, coming at you live. As I ponder more and more of late about what to do in life, what path to follow or forge, all due to grad school and the birth of my first child, I think now about a binary of touring vs. making work. Is it even a binary? All these thoughts could be because I am just lazy and don’t want to do the work of getting my work out there. Writing grants, making packets, sending them out, schmoozing with presenters is a lot of work. Work that scares me. Maybe scares me is the wrong word.
I see other artists who tour and get presented and looking at their work, I don’t understand why they were presented, why the director of theater X gave them a 6 month residency. Must be in the documentation the artist presented, or maybe the kind of work s/he does is more easily marketable. Could be that my work is just not interesting. Don’t get bitter, don’t get bitter, don’t get bitter.
And grad school, context, context, context. Shit in on context smell, a different context helps make food. So maybe I need to rewrite all my performance blurbs so the context is sexier. And then write the grants, make the packets, and hound the presenters. But for whom am I making the work? Because I work in a time based medium that can be viewed as performative, does that mean the work is made for other people? How many painters make work for themselves, and have studios full of canvasses not meant for general consumption?
And now a child! What a wonderful bundle of joy and confusion. Her laughter, smiles and cries make everything, all my frustrations disappear. But then they come back. Provide, provide, provide…that is what a parent, a father is supposed to do. Hack away at performing, etc to make money to provide. But then touring could conflict with schooling. School is still a couple years off yet.
So, do I finish this schooling, get my MA then jump out of the artistic realm into the academic realm to get health insurance, income to provide? Just as much chance of getting a big grant. Both require applications and schmoozing.
Maybe this is all justification for laziness. Artistic high road and all that. Even now all these thoughts/emotions I don’t want to bother to craft into a polished blog post. But isn’t this more just for me as a place to vent?
No one reads this anyways…
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