Money and Art

I have been grappling with the artist and money issue most of my life. It can be any art, not just theatre.

To be transparent and revealed here, I don't still have it solved either. I've made some progress,but everytime I think I have a handle on it, I see that I have a long way to go. We have so much conflicting programming about it, some of it good...some not so good. I made a list once, of the conflicting statements I'd heard, on the subject of art and money.

1. You should do it for free.

2. You shouldn't think about money, just be happy to do your art

3. You should only care about your art

4. You should put a price on your art.

5. You should give it away.

6. You're not a real artist unless you're making money.

7. You're a sell-out if you do your art for pay.

8. It's noble to struggle.

9. Have something to fall back on.

and of course -

10. Who do you think you are?

And we wonder why artists go crazy.

I'm not blaming anyone - I don't think it's anyone's fault, the thoughts are just there, the habit of thinking this way. Catherine Ponder and Florence Scoval Shinn, both well-known prosperity writers refer to this as the Adamic Dream. As in Adam. As in human. And illusionary.

People repeat these ideas to us for all kinds of reasons, not necessarily malicious. Some think they are being practical, some are uninformed - some jealous, yes. Many have given up the idea of earning their living doing work they love. But most of them are well-meaning, just perhaps a bit...unconscious. For a lot of people, earning money at their dream was never a possibility because they never allowed themselves a dream to begin with.

These messages have always been here. They slip in before we know it. From parents, teachers, rivals. We can drift along on this programming or we can choose what to believe. That's where our responsibility comes in.

It's our choice to assimilate these thoughts.

We should include this in an artist's training -- how to protect against detrimental ideas. It's challenging enough to be an artist -- it may look easy to others but we know different. We love it so much we don't see our learning process, we ignore the false starts and mistakes along the way. And because we love our art, we sometimes don't realize how hard we are already working.

This leads people -- and us as well -- to think getting paid for our art is taking the easy way out. And it really isn't - we just forget how much work creation takes, we love the process so much. And because we love our work, we do feel a bit guilty about getting paid for it.

In Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand said all wealth is created by the human mind. So I'm willing to use mine to better advantage. I'm ready to let these thoughts go and choose some better ones.

One good exercise, for anyone who works with affirmations, is to take all the negative thoughts listed above and write a contradictory, positive thought, then take that as an affirmation. I'm partial to sets of 10, either written or repeated right after the alarm goes off, when the mind is nice and receptive. This is also a good way to fill "empty" time waiting for the T or an appointment.

We also need to affirm ourselves, to be in our own corner. Some of us are naturally self-effacing and the idea of self-promotion is a little...distasteful. This is a big one for me, I am by nature a behind-the-scenes creator. I don't like to be centerstage myself - I like to direct the "centerstagers". And I am finding the balance between self-effacing and self-awareness.

I think it's in how we talk to ourselves. For example...

There is a lovely scene in the beginning of "A Star is Born" - specifically, the original with Janet Gaynor as Vicki Lester. She wants to be an actress and is told, early in the film, "You have a one in a million chance."

And she says, "What if I'm that one?"

That's a start. We need to tell that to ourselves. The antidote to "Who do you think you are?" The answer to #10. "What if I'm that one?" A step toward healing this confusion.

Now this may sound contradictory but this is exactly why I'm such an advocate of volunteer work in the theatre -- although it is work we are not exactly paid for, compensation is happening on a very deep level. We are making a gift of our skills and that increases what my teacher would call our "deserving index." Any skills and time donated are treated with tremendous appreciation -- if you're volunteering with the right group, of course -- and you increase your community of like-minded people. I've talked about this before, I will probably continue to do so. It is a prosperity practice to give our work as a gift and this is a great environment to do it in. Giving prepares us for receiving -- we frequently screw it up by blocking the receiving. We think as artists we must give and give and give without receiving. Many of us distrust prosperity and refuse to allow success in. That's the false conditioning.

The fact is that we derserve to be paid for our work, to be valued for our work. But we must own this idea first, we must take the risk to value ourselves, as Stanislavski says, the art in ourselves. Even when we get paid for our art, what we give to that art is beyond the payment we receive.