Rebecca F.

Probably stating the obvious here but the less money there is, the more struggling artists have to work longer hours at shitty jobs just to survive.  

And the less they create.  

Which is a big problem.  The worse the economy is, the more humans need to – yearn to – connect with simpler, human, and yes inexpensive experiences of...just being human.  

Is there anything more ooga booga than a rock concert?  Primal Man danced around fires, watched his shadows, and thus began to think his way out of cold, hunger, sickness, death. 

Live concerts make you feel – but they also inspire you to imagine.  A good song played through speakers frees the mind.  Conjuring up whatever you want is a liberating and delicious experience.  Never forget the thought police in Orwell’s 1984.

Just as ingenuity is essential to struggling people, as hustlers are sick creators at root, the digital global world is forcing us to be creative to survive. 

Need to find different work in a bad job market?  Imagine your life differently.  Need to figure out how your analog skill set can be harnessed and traded in a digital world?  Think your way out of it.  Blend, paint, stab at the paper.  Reinvent yourself.  Your story is what sells.  Acts that inspire humans to be more creative are thus life-inspiring. Necessity is the mother of invention, because without mothers we’re all dead.

ISIS already knows this.  

Do we?

I worry that as artists drop out of their crafts in order to survive, the world, our local communities, will suffer, too.  

Less independent art means less creative outlets, less space to feel think and be, and more suffocating parades of pictures and voices telling us what to buy, what to think, where to go, and what to do.  

So someone save the artists.  Give them money, give them a break.  Give them help, scrap metal to sell, your old gold jewelry, whatever.  Because without them we’re all a little less creative.

And a lot less able to survive.