My Cab Driver’s Thoughts on Art as a Career

You know how I always seem to get those chatty cab drivers? The ones who start telling you their life stories for no good reason (certainly not because I ask)? Well for the next eight days I’m stuck with one of those who cross-questions you like they took an interrogation training course with the CIA.

He started by asking me what I did for a living. It was around 3AM, I was exhausted, and therefore unprepared with a more diplomatic answer. I said it was complicated and, what with things being lost in translation, I just went with the naked truth and told him I was an artist.

'Oh,' says he, in our native tongue. 'That must be nice, you get to have fun.'

So sorry, I know, and, I know. Chalk it up to my fatigue, but that really ticked me off.

'Fun, is it?' I couldn’t help retorting, as best I could in words I hoped he could understand. 'Yeah, that’s what folks who don’t know would say.'
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I know I shouldn’t have said anything more. ​

​Heck, I should’ve just said I was a writer ~ I wouldn’t have been lying, and though that’s an altogether different rabbit hole (though I’ve linked that to my artist persona in another post), it would’ve been an easier one to ‘defend’ given my mental state at the time.
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But I had just ‘come out of the painting factory and into his cab’ so the truth-truth came out.

Forgive me, but I couldn’t help myself. Long and short of it was I spent the next few kilometres or so going into how many people might think art was fun ~ that it was some sort of hobby. Well, it is ~ for some people. For others of us, well, it’s something we take a little more seriously.
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Or maybe too seriously, I mean, who cares what other people think, right? ​

I’m pretty sure I’ve said in another jillablog post about how there’s really no point in trying to (forgive me) educate some people about this. If some folks think art is, whatever, then, that’s what they think, what we make is not for them, and everyone is entitled to you know what.

Besides ~ have I not also, in still another post ~ gone into why art is a very happy thing (a very happy thing, indeed)?

But just because something makes you happy ~ or brings you joy ~ doesn’t mean you don’t have to work both glutes off to get it (and more often than not, the hams and the legs attached to them, too).

You’d think I’d be used to it by now, though, after all these years (which again, I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned in yet another yadda yadda) ~ folks not, thinking very much of what it is we artists do (at least, not until (or not unless) it makes enough to buy a house in Tuscany.
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I’d like to think I am used to it, and again, why should I even care? ​

But I guess my reaction to this honest cab driver’s blithe remarks showed me this was still a raw spot.

Artists have been ‘misunderstood’ since people started painting their cave walls.

But then I suppose anybody who doesn’t do any thing is bound to not understand the thing simply because they don’t do it.

Like I will never really know what it’s like to have a baby. I remember the last ‘real ad agency’ I was in, the creative director and the account director were talking about this (our client at the time was baby formula) ~ I tried to, you know, join in in the conversation but they ignored the shiz out of me because well what did I know, you know?

I mean sure, my Mom had six kiddles after me and I remember seeing five of them as babies but that doesn’t mean shiz.

The ‘classic’ example I’ve heard is how doctors understand what it’s like to have certain illnesses even if they’ve never actually had the illnesses themselves because they’ve studied them.

​But I guess nothing beats first-hand experience. Like that psychologist on YouTube who says he’s actually suffered from depression himself. That does lend his advice more, credibility (for lackuva better), I guess.
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I guess a lot of what I’m saying here doesn’t even deserve to be, aired. ​

(And heaven knows I’ve gotten into enough trouble for airing what I think online) ~ but I guess my, ‘objective’ here (if there is one apart from the ‘classic’ vent) is to let any fellow artists out there (if any of us would be even remotely interested in what I had to say eheheh) know that ~ they’re not alone in feeling this way.

I mean, if any of us out there do (because maybe it’s just, immature x childish (toxic, miserable, etc) me) ~

I mean ~ if you’ve spent literal years (not just a few months, which I’ve heard an ‘art guru’ (whom I respect deeply, actually) mention as a time frame for some artists to ‘stick things out before giving up’) ~ not sleeping, not spending time or money or whatever on, I don’t know, friends, family, holidays, shopping ~ sacrificing, basically, just to ‘do this art thing’ ~

And then have someone who doesn’t even know shiz about you say, rather flippantly, or, dismissively, or, ‘nice weather we’re having-ly’, ‘Gee, that must be fun ~’

I don’t know if I’m at all justified for feeling this way or being rubbed the wrong way ~ I suppose I’m not ~ but I’m afraid I was.
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I guess I’m just asking for a little, I don’t know. Respect? I guess? ​

For what we do ~ especially now when, I guess, maybe, what little folks like me ever had is even less now because nowadays we can get computers to do it (not a rabbit hole I’m willing to go down here x I hope you know what I mean x what I didn’t mean x so sorry).

It’s true, I guess, these days, that years of experience or training or whatever don’t mean jack when really it’s all about the final product or the end result.

Just today, I was, venting again, I guess, to a fellow creative about how I’d made a mistake approaching what used to be considered a creative process as a creative process, when circumstances dictate otherwise.

I guess I’m wrong x I generally am, but I understand the goal of a creative process is make something beautiful and well-made. The circumstances I just referred to had the goal of making something that sells (and to Hades with creativity or craft or whatever).

Of course, there are lots of kinds of creativity and that was a gross generalisation or a sweeping statement so wide it woulda wiped across seven continents.
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But anyway, I guess I’m just, tired of ‘defending’ what I do.

Or making like it’s, something worth doing. Like Count put it, ‘Do you believe you have anything to do? or to speak in plain terms, do you really think that what you do deserves being called anything?’

In a perfect world, none of us ~ whether we were artists or not ~ should have to ‘defend’ what we do, I guess. I mean, I guess most people wouldn’t ask doctors why they were doctors or, you know.   Cab drivers why they drove cabs.

Heaven knows why, but that cab driver said he actually thought I was an accountant! ‘No way,’ I said. ‘I flunked math.’ ‘I’m fairly good at maths myself,’ he returned.

‘Who cares,’ I found myself thinking (so sorry). In any case, when I get back into his cab in a few hours or so, I think I’ll just not tell him any more (heaven knows I’ve told him enough about the ‘fun’ we have having our work rejected or pulling all-nighters or scrambling for exhibit funding or having our career choices criticised).
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I’m sure I’m wrong (again) (yet again) for thinking and feeling this way. ​

But I’m hoping I’m not wrong to, wish, I guess, that more people appreciated, a little more, all the work that goes into what we do. It’s true that it can be fun, we can get our kicks out of it, but it’s so much mooore than that.

For some of us (those of us who have ‘earned’ it (however you want to define ‘earn’) I guess, at least), it’s something that deserves a little more respect, or consideration. I hope I earn it, someday (not holding my breath) ~ but until then I’ll make this wish for those of us who have.
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