I've been getting our Subvert artist page up to speed, which has entailed a lot of the hidden, unglamorous, nonmusical work of music: tracking down WAV files and images and UPC codes and publishing info from seven years ago, downloading from this archive, uploading to that site, trying to find the graphics that are stuck on the ancient laptop with the swollen lithium battery, refreshing, reordering, entering endless 2FA codes.
This is the stuff people don't really talk about in the world of DIY. Very little of it is fun or fulfilling. It feels like your day job, only you probably won't ever get paid for it. (I might be a little salty because WBEZ just published the Chicago Arts Census finding about how little artists typically earn here, and of course the comments included an internet dude positing that artists could totally earn a living if they just made art that people actually like.) And it all becomes even harder on today's internet, where AI opportunists are ready to prey on anything you upload.
I suppose I'm also thinking about it because I was just listening to the episode of In Our Time about Handel's Messiah. Handel, lucky man, did not have to deal with tech bros. But he did have to deal with a host of other obstacles: self-producing whole seasons of his work; risking bankruptcy; finding his own venues and singers despite a war; navigating shifting public opinions about Christianity itself. You don't need to know the details of the struggle to appreciate the art, but they're oddly reassuring, in the same way that it's reassuring to see studio footage of the Beatles tripping over cables.
I think the point is to remember that when anyone puts their art into the world, they have gone through this kind of resistance to do it. It takes madness, folly, stubbornness, and wild amounts of love.
This is the stuff people don't really talk about in the world of DIY. Very little of it is fun or fulfilling. It feels like your day job, only you probably won't ever get paid for it. (I might be a little salty because WBEZ just published the Chicago Arts Census finding about how little artists typically earn here, and of course the comments included an internet dude positing that artists could totally earn a living if they just made art that people actually like.) And it all becomes even harder on today's internet, where AI opportunists are ready to prey on anything you upload.
I suppose I'm also thinking about it because I was just listening to the episode of In Our Time about Handel's Messiah. Handel, lucky man, did not have to deal with tech bros. But he did have to deal with a host of other obstacles: self-producing whole seasons of his work; risking bankruptcy; finding his own venues and singers despite a war; navigating shifting public opinions about Christianity itself. You don't need to know the details of the struggle to appreciate the art, but they're oddly reassuring, in the same way that it's reassuring to see studio footage of the Beatles tripping over cables.
I think the point is to remember that when anyone puts their art into the world, they have gone through this kind of resistance to do it. It takes madness, folly, stubbornness, and wild amounts of love.
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