I played my set in Philly to much of the same aplomb that I
got in Pittsburgh. I had some people saying they identify with Harold and that
I was fun. I even had some people buy/donate in exchange for a CD. One girls
reasoning was “It’s easier to give away money than it is to create art”. Which sounds
profound and makes for a good title but comes with a lot of asterisks.
Like did she mean that it’s easier to physically hand over a dollar than it is to paint a painting? Probably, but that dollar had to come from somewhere. Art’s also subjective, and can be appreciated or not in a lot of ways, I could make really terrible or even harmful things so shouldn’t that have a negative value for some people? Also we have to already buy into the idea that money has value. If she handed me a ruble I wouldn’t have wanted it because I don’t know what to do with a ruble.
Finding a monetary value for my “art” (which is a strong
word for songs about snowpants and zoos) is an impossible task. Which is why it’s
really awkward when asking for money or donation or exchanging cash for
creation. What’s the right number? One dollar? Two? Five? It’s almost as if a
capitalistic system isn’t a good one for facilitating the creation of music! It
costs me literally nothing for another person to download my CD, so there’s no
marginal cost of more people listening. But that doesn’t really bake in the
time I took to write and record. But why would that have any value either? It was
fun! I wanted to do it! I’d do it again too if it wasn’t for you meddling kids
and your mangy mutt!
Tying money to effort is the basic facade of capitalism. If
you work hard, you earn more money. But that’s pretty easily proven wrong. I
can work hard at trying to push a boulder up a cliff. I probably won’t
accomplish that and even if I did, someone would have to have wanted me to do
it, and even if they did it would have been easier to use a crane, and then I
wouldn’t have been working as hard.
So I think the saying should be “If you work hard, you earn
more money* ** *** ****”
*If that thing you worked on needed to be done
**If someone was there to pay you
*** If that person has money
**** Work may not be proportional to value received
I’m basically running a charity except the charity is me.
And I’m not a very good cause. I'm probably the worst charity and you should donate to every other charity before me.
So usually musicians or promoters just ask for gas money.
Cuz that’s something that everyone understands. It costs gas to get places. I’ve
bought gas, I get that. And gas money makes sense to people.
I don’t really have a solution here. I’m just an observer
who’s now experiencing more of that especially since I'm hosting a show tonighttttttt
