2. The essential question is "What advice would you give to working-class/poor young people interested in an arts career?" and basically she doesn't really know what to say about it. There are reasons for this. But I have plenty to say!
3. I've said this before: "Can I make a living an artist?" requires a fuller understanding of "living" and "artist." Yes, you can make just a good a living doing some arts job/trade as you can working in a grocery store or factory! Maybe even a unionized one! More likely less.
4. And "art" needs to be understood on a wider level as well. The OP talks about short fiction and poetry being expensive to submit, without much in the way of reward. I'll tell you that in genre fiction, short stories do pay (a little) and nobody pays to submit.
5. Same with her preoccupation with "connections"—the reality is that some form of art are simply thoroughly middle-class and the many barriers are purposefully designed to exclude those without immense subsidy. Literary fiction, opera, the gallery system in visual arts etc.
6. But there's more to art than that. I know dozens of working commercial writers, artists, videographers, actors, and musicians. No day job, no trust fund, no subsidy. And no, you haven't heard of most of them. They're as successful as Subway Sandwich Shop employees/managers.
7. But look around. Was there a jazz band at brunch? Are the buttons on the screen of your phone a designed thing? Did you fall asleep to an ASMR video on YouTube? Did you click on the link to my most recent short story?
curiousfictions.com/stories/1049-n…
curiousfictions.com/stories/1049-n…
8. What I'd tell a working-class person seeking a career in the arts is simple: find the job in the arts most like a trade or a small side hustle/business, and pursue that vector.
9. And I'd also tell a working-class person that arts isn't an escape from the class, it's a section of the class. Who do you think busts their hump dragging marble around to make into sculpture? Who runs the lights at a theater? Who writes blog posts and gets paid by the piece?
10. It's the same jobs as dragging out lawnmowers and snowblowers or changing oil in cars, or stamping out pieces in a factory, or poking at a spreadsheet in a tiny office in a warehouse. Pays about the same too.
11. Of course the arts versions of these jobs can be hard to get. Not "I need a half a million bucks worth of subsidy from my parents" hard, but you have to be good. Practice at home and all that. Fanfic, soundcloud, church choir, whatever.
12. And if you're working class or poor, you're used to small paychecks that are sometimes late or sometimes bounce. You're used to working a gig with the fringe benefit of free food. You're used to living in a smaller or dumpier home. Well, STAY used to it.
13. The real reason why people are wary of giving advice to those who aren't already rich is that not-rich people have to be good. Rich people can just hire talent to make them look, sounds, read, or otherwise appear to be good. Or they can buy an audience and press coverage.
14. So the real terror is this–having to look at a student in a room full of people with similar ambitions and say, "Yeah, you can do it. You just have to work to be the best person in this room. And probably this building."
15. And their follow-up question is "How?"
Well, if you got to your position thanks to a $500,000 subsidy, and connections, the reality is that you have no idea how.
Well, if you got to your position thanks to a $500,000 subsidy, and connections, the reality is that you have no idea how.
16. So you end up with answers that basically boil down to turning away from the student and saying to your wealthy colleagues, "Maybe we should fight for social democracy? Or write a poem about it?"
17. That is why this discussion is almost always extremely frustrating. It doesn't help anyone in the short term, and looks to the well-off art crowd to do something it cannot do. Social democratic reforms have always come from the fights of the working class.
18. You know, the people who are filling thousands of art-related jobs despite the lack of guidance from their instructors.
