Alt text: a post from @lolennui.bsky.social that says: Once my German friend asked what creative people do without arts grants and other support in the US and I felt like a parent trying to explain to their kid that the puppies can die sometimes
If you have some free time and aren’t easily depressed, go ahead and look up the backgrounds of your favorite, recently ascendant artists. Many, if not most of them come from privileged backgrounds, have wealthy spouses, trust funds, or familial industry connections.
And while I personally don’t think that such advantages necessarily diminish the importance of their art, just think of how much more potentially moving and profound work we’ll never see just because the people who should be making it never got chance to develop, since they’ve been too busy just trying to keep a roof over their heads.
I’ve thought this for a long time about other things. it’s truly a shame.
We could have cured cancer years ago but the scientist grew up poor and ended up working the graveyard shifts in the mines.
I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.
~ Stephen Jay Gould
This is how societies fall. Everyone just trying to keep a roof above their heads.
I was a very talented artist and musician growing up and all through high school, from a nice poor family.
Had to join the army and become an engineer, no trust fund to write books and make music. Luckily at this stage in my life both are possible in my free time, but wished I could do other things than engineer.
If you want to see art though you can just ask a computer to make it for you
Boooo, that will never compare to the personal satisfaction of honing a craft.
Edit: machine generation can be fun but I promise it’s not as fulfilling as finding something you love doing purely for the sake of it and watching your progress over years.
Someone is going to say the same way a flesh artist does. But I think it’s more than synthesis of what a person sees, its their lived experience
