Waiting on Making Art and Making a Living by Mason Currey

Many of us are drawn to a life in the arts but daunted by how to balance that ambition with the very real need to pay rent and put food on the table. It is impossible to become an accomplished painter, composer, or novelist without spending time experimenting, making false starts, absorbing criticism, reading, talking, and moping about the house. All this time must be purchased, one way or another. Is the history of art and ideas just a history of rich kids?

The answer, of course, is no. William Carlos Williams was a family doctor. Franz Kafka was an insurance man, as were Charles Ives and Wallace Stevens. Grace Hartigan temped. James Joyce mooched off his brother; Christopher Isherwood ingratiated himself with a wealthy uncle. Virginia Woolf and Louisa May Alcott were determined to make their writing pay no matter what. And their material circumstances had an impact on all of their creative outputs.

From family money to jobs to colorful schemes, Mason Currey, author of the acclaimed
Daily Rituals, explores both the well-worn and unlikely paths forward for the up-and-coming artist. Making Art and Making a Living is an entertaining and thought-provoking examination of the collision of creative ambitions with real-world necessities and of the messy, glorious, torturous compromises that gifted individuals have patched together when facing the eternal dilemma of an artistic life.

Y'all should immediately be able to tell why this book jumps out at me. I mean?

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As Currey himself describes in the introduction (yes, I've already started it), we cannot meaningfully talk about the arts and creativity—especially in an era that's actively dismantling the humanities—without describing the material circumstances that make that generative work possible. To even attempt to do so is straight naïvety.

What's that quote—I work so generations later may do art?

“I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.”

Thank you, John Adams.

Anyway, as I grow up and attempt to make what I do more sustainable beyond the life dreams aspect, a depressing amount of advice seems to boil down to "marry rich or have a trust fund."

Bret Easton Ellis could almost be kidding when he says it, but no—other people throughout book publishing, journalism, and other creative industries pretty much admit that nobody is surviving right now without those two factors unless they got into it years ago or were (are) extremely, extremely lucky. And that the luck is a requirement, not a flaw, so we don’t need to be defensive about that accusation either! I talk a lot about how you can work yourself into the opportunities for luck but still need the luck itself, and how that's a misconception about working full-time as a creative too, so I read and think a lot around the economy of all this. The advice is genuine, even if we wish it were different. You can get yourself to 99% of making it work but it’s that last 1% that feels out of your control.

If we properly compensated creatives, or even if we had the same economy as fifteen years ago (although every generation has its challenges), I might not have had to work approximately four different jobs at one time to afford the time sacrifice to write my debut novel. Cobbling together a combination that’s flexible enough to give you bandwidth and the schedule is the tricky part—and I’m aware already that I am so incredibly lucky in so much of making the pursuit of my work possible.

Grinding and grit will always be part of the process of endurance, which is why the authors who make it to traditional publication are roughly 1 in 1200 (supposedly, but I digress), but I want to do everything within my power to make the burden a little lighter if I am capable.

Similarly, I'm not one of those people who scoffs that someone had the material reality to be able to be creative with no constraints as if that impacts their deservedness. I just think we should be transparent about the luck involved too. No pursuit is wholly even, and there will always be advantages in who develops in which ways based on their circumstances. But! It's still worth talking about how we might nudge society to and from art-making when the survival aspect and valuation can be so difficult. Maslow's triangle, baby.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs | Image from Simply Psychology

I frequently recommend Mason Currey's Daily Rituals and Daily Rituals: Women at Work books as light reads to collect some inspiration as to how people find the time for anything and structure their day, as that seems to always be one main hurdle. The books include a ton of coffee-table-style snippets, so I finished the first book over many evenings by just reading one vignette before bed.

When I found out he was writing a book on the funding that made those lifestyles possible? Sold. Immediately. I make the joke that anyone who contributes to Words Like Silver via the donation portal here or on Substack is a patron of the arts, so I love any discussion around that concept.

I don't think it's greedy to try to make your work more sustainable over time, and I think the only creatives who will "make it" (beyond those already insulated from most of the financial risk and opportunity cost) are those who don't look away from the necessity of talking about the money and how to position yourself to be able to take the blows. It's not stupid to chase a creative career but it maybe is stupid to pretend like the finances of it don't intrinsically matter.

From the book's introduction. (Exact quote subject to change, as I have an early review copy.)

I'm partway through the book now, and it's divided into a few different sections that make sense. Sure enough, there's a whole lot of "so-and-so inherited their trust and lived off the interest generated from the principal," but there's also a section on, yes, patronage (pros and cons) as well as odd jobs. It’s non-judgmental and engaging.

So yes, I'm deeply excited to be reading this one.