From time to time I read complaints from professional
artists of one stripe or another complaining that people giving their work
away, or selling it too cheaply, is bad because it makes it harder for people
to make a living selling their creative work. To which my immediate visceral
response is always, “cry me a river, Princess.”
This complaint irritates me on many levels. First, you may
recognise it as the same whinge Engels has against the Irish in “The Condition
of the Working Class in England” and every coddled economic sector has against
“those dem furriners stealing our jobs”. I am down with the “Invisible Hand”
and believe that price-fixing almost invariably has a net negative impact both
on the world in general and on the sector that implements it. If changes in
technology or society mean an activity becomes uneconomic, so be it. I won’t be
upset if market forces sweep away the possibility of people earning a living by
selling art. For that matter, I won’t kick up a fuss if market forces sweep
away the possibility of me earning a living by doing what I do. I will just
figure out some other way to earn a living.
Second, I actively believe the disappearance of a
professional artistic class would be a good thing. Is this mere sour grapes, or
the kind of crude class animosity epitomised by TISM’s iconic, “If you’re Creative, Get Stuffed”? Maybe. But obviously I am going to argue “no.” Here goes.
Professionalism is a
Necessary Evil.
And like that other necessary evil, government, the less
necessary it is, the more evil. I see the point of the division of labour; I
recognise that it enabled the development of civilisation, by freeing a
privileged caste from the necessity of spending all their time scrabbling for a
living, and can see that it would not make sense for everyone to synthesise
their own polypropylene and perform their own gall bladder surgery. I invoke
the importance of the division of labour myself, on the frequent occasions when
my superiors want me to be an accountant or an advertising copywriter rather
than a scientist.
But the ideal of humanity I aspire to is that of the
jack-of-all-trades Renaissance man. I believe practically anyone can do
practically anything, and that if they want to do it, they should do it. I
don’t like people taking things that can and should be done in a million
different ways and ring-fencing them with rules about the “right” way to do
them. Professionalisation of activities that everyone can do is a sign of
societal sickness. I’ve said before... or maybe that was my alter ego... this
is one of the things I agree with Schopenhauer about:
Dilettantes!
Dilettantes! – this is the derogatory cry those who apply themselves to art or
science for the sake of gain raise against those who pursue it for love of it
and pleasure in it. This derogation rests on their vulgar conviction that no
one would take up a thing seriously unless prompted to it by want, hunger, or
some other kind of greediness. The public has the same outlook and consequently
holds the same opinion, which is the origin of its universal respect for the
‘professional’ and its distrust of the dilettante. The truth, however, is that
to the dilettante the thing is the end, while to the professional as such it is
the means; and only he who is directly interested in a thing and occupies
himself with it from love of it, will pursue it with entire seriousness. It is
from such as these, and not from wage earners, that the greatest things have
always come.
I would not lament the decline in commercial brewing and
resulting loss of jobs if everyone suddenly got into home brewing in a big
way. I would not lament the decline in
commercial hairdressing and resulting loss of jobs if it was suddenly in vogue
for couples to cut each other’s hair. I don’t lament the fact that there are no
longer 30,000 sex industry workers in Omaha, as was the case in the Prohibition
Era.
There are some things where having a professional caste is
neutral; there is no real harm done by commercial brewing or hairdressing, for
example. But there are some activities where professionalisation can be pernicious.
These are activities where mass
participation is a public good.
Take sport, for example. If the example of the highly-paid
professional footballers of Biederburg FC inspires the young people of
Biederburg to get out on the weekend and kick a football around, it is a good
thing; if it inspires them only to sit at home and watch the football on
television, it is a bad thing.
Or music. If the Biederland Symphony Orchestra inspires
Biederlanders to buy their own nose-flutes and form groups for the performance
of Biederlandisch folk music, then it is a good thing. If it sets up an
unattainable musical ideal that Biederlanders feel inhibited from aspiring to,
it is a bad thing.
Sport and music are recreational activities that are
supposed to be fun and that everyone should do if they like. So is drawing
pictures. And telling stories.
If writing by professionals inspires people to tell each
other their own stories, it is good. If it doesn’t, it is not a good form of
entertainment. A professionalism that inhibits people from telling each other
their own stories by erecting a whole lot of artificial rules about how you
should tell stories is a pernicious
thing that should be torn down.
I will harp on about writing for two reasons. First, writing
is the art I practice myself, having let my drawing skills atrophy since I was
14 and never having been any good at music. Second, on the interwebz I detect a
current of disdain among professional writers for amateur writers[1] that
professional sportsmen would never have for amateur sportsmen, professional
musicians would never have for amateur musicians, and professional painters
more rarely seem to have for amateur painters.
You (a hypothetical professional might say), “I have no
disdain for amateurs. However, I want to be one of those high-fliers that
inspire other people; an Ussain Bolt or Edith Piaf of writing.” That is an
audacious ambition. And I am not one to discourage audacious ambitions.
However, I still think it would be better if you had a day job.
You will never be tempted to let something that
could be a masterpiece into the world unfinished, just because by experience
you know it is good enough to make you a gazillion dollars.
You will not have long hours to fill with
unnecessary saleable words, making the later books in your series bloated and rambling
compared to the early ones.
Most importantly, an Ussain Bolt or an Edith Piaf of writing should have *something to say*. You should not just be an entertainer providing mental chewing gum. And the probability of you having something worthwhile and interesting to say to people will be greater the more things you do and the more you get out among people who do not live in a bubble of writing and reading and writing about reading and reading about writing.
You may well say, “Sheesh, I don’t want to be some great inspirational
paragon. This is just the thing I love doing. I want to write, and don’t want
to do anything else. Providing mental chewing gum is just fine by me.”
Fair enough. Everyone should be free to have a go at earning
a living however they like. Go right ahead, being aware your role is not a
particular noble or useful one. And follow the advice given in Pasolini’s immortal
“Getta la Mama el treno”:[2] “A writer writes.”
The lesson of NaNoWriMo to me is that any regular busy person with a
full time job and small children and a punishing role-playing schedule can
write 50,000 words capable of getting four-star reviews on Goodreads in a
month. You, a professional without all these distractions, should be able to write
2 million saleable words a year easy. Compete with these amateurs flooding the
market on productivity. Be Pedro Camacho. Or, at the least, Robert Silverberg
in the 1960s. Do it, and you will make a
good living. Don’t whinge about market forces making life hard.
[1]: To be fair, this disdain is more evident in the class of
useless parasites that surround professional authors.
[2]: I may not be remembering the details of this film *exactly*
correctly.
