Kenneth sed: (referring to this post)
Kwame, It’s clear to me why you feel the way you do: you’re getting paid to blog here. As Brian Eno says, “Art is everything we don’t need to do.” Blogging here is something you must do (at least for three months), hence it ain’t art. — Kenneth
Kwame sez:
Kenneth, you have to be wrong, I think. The day getting paid for art someone disqualified art is the day we will have to dismiss most of the great works of art of western civilization. Anyway, I am not blogging for the money–let’s not forget, the amount can’t come even close to the word count of my obsessive output. Not sure about you, but I NEED to do art.
Eno is wrong, even if he is clever and even if his work on Paul Simon’s new album was a touch of brilliance that has given Simon yet another life. He is wrong about art if that is what he really thinks about art. After all, by that definition, spitting on the sidewalk or pissing in public would be art. You see the problem?
You [dear readers] say:
Eno used “is” for “becomes” I would propose but still think, Wrong. Dreams mystify necessity I think.
The Hood Company
Wasn’t Virgil paid to write the Aeneid?
Dear Kenneth,
Do you believe, like John Berger, that visual art has been diminished by having a market value? What constitutes getting paid? Does teaching poetry in a university pay you to write poetry? Is blogging art, or a chance to overhear a conversation among artists? In Tibetan culture, material well being is a condition necessary for enlightenment. In the West, artists de-value material well being because of what greed has wreaked. But if we didn’t have food, shelter, we couldn’t write and think.
Are you setting up false dichotomies? How unlike you! On one side are you saying poetry and blogging are part of a gift economy (a la Lewis Hyde) whose value lies in an exchange, an encounter that occurs in language, and cannot be put to use. And if you assign the exchange a monetary value, its practitioners go over to the dark side and both they and their exchange are sullied?
I think poetry and the marketplace–the worlds of publishing and teaching–mix in much more messy ways, making your dichotomy a false one.
Actually I think that poetry is extraordinary in that it is a non economy and thus is obliged to take risks that other market-based forms are free from. Think of how many market-drive successful visual artists are not permitted by the market to deviate from their formula. Alas, my great disappointment in the world of poetry is that many poets fall prey to these same pitfalls without any end result. What a waste! In our non-economy we have the great privilege — and luxury — of true experimentation; with nary an audience and even more scarcely a buck, we have nothing but freedom.
I can’t remember the last time I was paid to write poetry. I’ve never received a royalty check, but things like this blog, my teaching job, readings and lectures are peripheral economic benefits to my practice as a poet. I call this an occupational hazard of what we do. But, oy, the intellectual capital and the street cred I’ve gained in ten years of this, no amount of money can buy.
Either way, Paul Simon is terrible.