Artists are lazy pigs
Kia ora friends
It’s been a while since I posted - life can get a bit tsunami-ish. But here I am, back here with a new hip. I paid for this new piece of my body because in our current public health system I am shit-out-of-luck. After a long, long, long time on the waiting list I realised I would just go round and round, washing machine style forever. I’ve given up kidding myself that there is a public health system that works for things like hips eaten away by arthritis. After nearly 3 years on crutches I could see myself graduating to a wheelchair.
I’m fortunate though, that I have won a few awards lately, so, now I can pay for the thirty thousand dollar operation. Without the awards I certainly couldn’t. An artist’s life - particularly a writer’s - does not pay well. Many of my literary colleagues *teach in universities, or the like, to make a living. Of course this is becoming harder and harder as creative writing courses disappear, teaching positions become fewer and work loads become even more humongous. It’s a wonder these writers can produce any of their own work at all.
In the year 2000 - after ten years away from Aotearoa - I returned, determined that I would finally be a writer. Thanks to some good creative writing courses that helped me improve my craft and some supportive people who helped convince me that I could indeed reach for what I was afraid might be beyond me - and perhaps some good luck - I’ve had a career/ still have a career as a writer.
Career is perhaps not the correct word though, because ‘career’ suggests that a regular wage or salary might also be involved. There is nothing financially regular about this career. What I do have is a bunch of awards to line up on my shelf and some of them also pay for the operations I need (I have another big one coming up soon). I also have a pretty decent writer’s CV, but apart from the awards, which are earmarked for new joints, I don’t have a house or a car or the bank balance of someone who has spent twenty five years working in an industry that they have been successful in. As an aside, I figured out that going on my average earnings over the last quarter century - I get about sixty four cents an hour.
I’m not writing about this as a complaint, as much as to point out how much we value the arts in this country. In Ireland, for instance, there is a Basic Income for the Arts which pays 2000 artists a wage of 325 euros a week. This recognises that artists don’t live a ‘normal’ working life. An artist often goes for weeks or months with little or no money coming into the coffers, even though they are working a 40 hour week ( often longer). Then there will be an influx of money at the end of a writing contract for a screenwriting project, or royalties for a play or a book advance.
As our government swerves harder and harder to the right, arts funding is under threat. If you’ve followed some of my posts, you’ll know that poetry and theatre that I have made has seen particular people (yes, I’m talking about you, ACT) threaten Creative New Zealand (our biggest arts funder).
Do artists even deserve to be funded by the state? Haven’t they just made a choice to not do a ‘real’ job? How important are the arts anyway? Aren’t the arts just a waste of time? What does the arts have to do with ‘real life’ anyway? Shouldn’t we defund the arts and use the money for something more realistic, like, say, the military?
If you haven’t asked these questions, I encourage you to have a think on them. It’s surprising how many of us doubt the worth of art and artists.
I can be pretty certain that my friends from ACT (and the political right in general) answer with: No, they don’t deserve it! What’s art got to do with anything? Art’s a waste of time and money. We’re spending an extra nine billion dollars on defense and we feel great about it. Yay! And anyway artists are lazy pigs, everyone knows that.
*P.S. Lazy pig note: I also taught Creative Writing until my epilepsy increased so much that that I can longer have an external job.