The business of being creative is also a creative business.
Whether you paint, write, play music or make films, other people whose livelihood depends on the commerce that surrounds art, are likely to be involved.
Everyone from the grunts who carry equipment into venues to management that books events, all of them expect to be paid, and, wherever money is involved, there is sure to be an underlying tension between the people who make the art and the people who profit from it.
Most artists prefer to concentrate on producing work and leave all the other crap to someone who knows what they are doing. Creativity is something most people like to be involved with, in some form or other, and, if they can’t be creative themselves, people who work in creative industries at least get some joy out of being involved.
Back when Courtney Love wrote this piece for Salon on the way money is divided between the music industry and the people who actually make music, radio was still a big factor in the way music made its way to audiences. Nowadays, it’s iTunes and Spotify that rule distribution (although a lot of artists are able to deal directly with their audiences) but the situation is probably not all that different.
So, if you’re creative, you might define success as the intellectual and emotional reaction you have to the work you do, and you might also accept that you need to involve yourself with others who provide skills that help you do other things like manage your work, produce it and market it.
But how do you know when you meet them, if they are the sort of people who have you and your creative work’s best interests at the top of their list of things to do?
Negativity works
A good thing to watch for is a technique people in business use to sell their services that is as old as money.
If you find yourself sitting talking to someone who is telling you that you are lacking in some way, that you’re a bit short of some special ingredient that only they can supply, if they are telling you over and over that you have faults that only they can fix, you probably want to leave them alone.
Being creative is probably the most humanly vulnerable thing anyone can do for a living, and, at its heart is the burden of carrying a doubt that anything you do is any good. In a lot of ways, it’s a central concern all artists have to work over throughout their entire lives. But it’s a question to be addressed personally and psychologically and best not solved through external validation.
People who sell deodorant will tell you that you smell, people who want to whiten your teeth will tell you that anything less than shining white enamel is unattractive, people who want you to buy their book on how to use a software program will title it ‘Software program for dummies’.
Billy Corgan talks about being manipulated in this way in an interview with Joe Rogan that’s interesting generally, but the specific details are at 11 minutes and 30 seconds. The idea is also known as ‘negging’ and it’s something men who call themselves ‘pickup artists’ think works when they are looking for a relationship.
It’s also probably worth thinking about how you react when someone tells you something good about yourself and the work you do. A lot of people find praise difficult to accept or deal with. In many people, it can create feelings of distrust, people often undervalue it because they suspect the person offering it wants something from them.
The whole issue is a vexed one. Ultimately, whoever you trust to market, managed or otherwise involve themselves with you and your creative life, you should be careful to be sure that you do actually trust them.
And then you can just get on with what is the only really truly sustaining aspect of making music, making music.
Post by James Gallaway