She says, "Like any good poet—any good liberal, really—I had been trained all my life to distrust corporate environments." And I too, have often balked as I felt like I was getting too close to my black-holish perception of jobs that actually make money, worrying that the money would chafe my freak veneer right on off. But somehow, in reading Lederer's interview, I began to wonder that she might have the healthiest attitude toward the (false?) choice between practicing one's art and getting a real job that I've encountered in a while.
Now, Lederer has all the poet street cred she can muster. She's published three books, she's got the MFA from (where else?) Iowa, and she can quote Oppen and Bataille without disturbing the air around her. Meanwhile she's also quite well-versed in all the shortcomings that accompany the wholesale purchase of the MFA/Po-Biz machinery:
"One audience I imagine for myself is people who can't understand how a serious poet could work at a finance firm. This is also bizarre. Goethe was a bureaucrat. Eliot worked as a banker. Stevens worked as an attorney at an insurance firm. The ghosts of Rilke and Wordsworth—along with the 300+ MFA programs, which now seem to employ all Living Poets—have misled the American public egregiously into thinking that poets are morally pure and/or useless."
From this, I take it to heart that Lederer's healthy distrust of the corporate life-model could only, eventually, extend to become a distrust of inner gears that have us all working our romance with the marginalized artist around our mouths like so much worn-out chaw. I love her insistance that opting out of academia isn't a path banned to the poet. And I love the suggestion that being creative does not, after all, render us "useless" to our deeply fucked up, soul-sucking, scary Capitalist culture. Beyond that, she seems to suggest that participating in said culture doesn't necessarily have to fuck up, suck the soul from, or frighten any reasonably sound person-- creative or otherwise. And that choosing to starve for one's art doesn't necessarily put one on a higher ethical plane.
All of that, I find very refreshing. And, well, I guess it makes me feel a little less like a faker that I didn't decide to go whole hog into the academic/artist life myself.
3 comments:
Great post, M.
But I can't believe that you did/do even entertain the possibility that you're a "faker" for working in the so-called real world. Aside from the very obvious and not particularly sexy necessity of having to tend to those less artistic needs on Maslow's hierarchy (food, shelter, etc.), a contrary and, to my mind, compelling case could be made that it's every bit as much of a charade to enter academia as to avoid it. I've read about, and spoken to, many folks who confess that the world of students, papers and meetings suffocates their creative impulse. More to be said, for sure, but I wanted to get that immediately on the record.
To that, I'd say I think it's kind of a to-each-his-own thing. A lot of my friends who went the teaching route LOVE the teaching and feel like it fuels them, giving them constant and immediate access to cultural pulse-taking-- of students, colleagues, etc. Sure, it CAN stymy some people. But then, so could, oh, I don't know... working for a hedge fund... if you found hedge funds to be totally devoid of personal and professional value.
So, basically, yeah, I feel like a faker a lot of the time. I put NO energy into writing anything other than blog posts-- and even less than that into cultivating anything that might resemble an audience. I can't force myself to get interested in getting anything published. I get all weak in the knees when I think about "self-marketing." And if I didn't push myself, I'd probably go weeks on end without writing anything at all.
But I see plenty of folks who are, in or out of academia-- either way, toiling day in and day out in service to their creative pursuits. And mostly, what *I* do is *think* about my creative pursuits without much toil. So, I guess it's more the dearth of time I dedicate to it than anything else that makes me feel that way... but, yeah, I often feel like I'm talking out my ass when I attempt to discuss artistic practice at all. Because I'm just not participating to what may or may not be my full potential.
But then I think, well, don't we all, artistic or no, feel like poseurs most of the time any-ol'-way? And isn't that what I've been saying all along? That it's the momentary buying into the pose that gets us (well, me) pushed past my natural inertia in the first place?
Ugh. This discussion could trail on forever and ever.
Well, I think we're talking about two different things now: my response was referring to people who actively create (published or not), but are obliged to make a living. Who, after all, do you know that can support themselves just on their writing? There aren't many.
I think you are talking more about being able (willing?) to creat in the first place. Obviously that is a whole other issue. If the person isn't actively engaged in their art, how they earn a paycheck should be the least of their worries, no?
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