Rufus Hickok: It's very hard to make art in a society where it is deeply ingrained that the serious work of your life is making money for other people and taking care of your loved ones, and art is a slightly self-indulgent hobby for yourself.

It's very hard to make art in a society where it is deeply ingrained that the serious work of your life is making money for other people and taking care of your loved ones, and art is a slightly self-indulgent hobby for yourself.

Humans have made art since they lived in caves in unimaginable squalor and hardship

You’re both obviously right?

Sure. It’s an act of self-assertion, which is both doable and alienating. Maybe a bit hostile. I feel like this was what Virginia Woolf was saying in that essay.

I wasn’t expressing a contrary opinion. Art is always a “luxury” (ie not food, shelter or reproduction). So the little voice that says to the artist “this is an extravagance” is both correct and something that artists have had to love making art so much that they’ve ignored it throughout history.

For me Art is a necessity It’s food for the soul Life without Art is merely exist and not truly living A society that doesn’t value its artists is brutal and uncivilized

merely EXISTENCE Autocorrect again!

I went to art school. Now I work in tech. 😭

I hope you can still find a little bit of time for your art 😭 Don’t feel bad T. S. Eliot had a boring day job

Art is a necessity for me. It lifts me, keeps me aligned with my path. Beauty feeds me. For years I lived with art, a good coffee maker, a Heriz rug, my music & my cat. I’d go without for years to buy one thing I truly love. I’m still that way.

And in Bali, there is no word for art since everything is art.

If you put the same level of effort and discipline into your craft that society gives to billionaires, then you are above reproach

Every musician/band/group/DJ/singer I’ve ever danced to made it far enough along for their art to eventually make it to my ears - and move my feets Their 45 and 33-1/3 vinyl, 8-tracks, cassettes, CDs all made it out into the world and into my world My hats off to any artist that plows their path

AAAAUGH

I would aver that *any* act of creation has benefit-peripheral and directly-to improving life and conforms to the notion of “leave the place a bit nicer than it was when you first arrived.”

Literally a male coworker in the 90s, when I quit to make jewelry full time, said, what are you gonna do when you grow up. I made it 7 years and then got sick of it and went into IT. 🤷🏼‍♀️ Where I suppose I was an uber adult

"[We] make both commercial and uncommercial rock. To make only one kind is not interesting." -Atsuo from the band Boris

Because it's pretty true, actually.

Goes back all the way to pre-hinduistic varnas… 🤷🏻‍♂️ Plus the hyperbolic discounting of “Oh, what a gorgeous cathedral! What a nice painting” — CENTURIES after the artists needed to hear those words and maybe get a bit of food and shelter. Van Gogh? Rembrandt? Mozart? Tarkovsky?

Exactly. Plus no one wants to hear about your sexy alien art at “a civilised lunch”.

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