recent reader exchange on art, meaning, compromising, love, money, what i stand for

In the spirit of not shying away from aggressive questioning and open dialogue, as this is quite representative of many private exchanges between artists, I present a recent email exchange. The reader has agreed to participate here anonymously (thank you).

Subject line: Harsh Feedback

Hi Evelyn,

(Forgive my familiarity in greeting you like that.)

No problem, that seems like a fine way to greet me. Blogging isn't as formal as it appears.

I have been a regular reader and subsriber for several months now.  I "virtually" fell in love with you via your writing and had to keep up with everything you wrote about.  Your insight into the simplicity of life and social interactions etc were inspiring or at least encouraging.  Your sensitivity to others and your willingness to express sincere feelings about life were captivating.

Thank you.

Now the complaint.  Lately, you have been writing more about yuor marketing ideas.  I know that when I started reading your blog that marketing was the ostensible theme, but it was not very evident.  To be quite blunt, I am somewhat offended by the appropriation of spirituality and art by commercial ventures for the sole purpose of enriching the capitalists.  I feel it is ingenuine and expoitative.

Fair enough. There are those that are upset by the increase (it's always been there) in pseudo-religious-spiritual-mystical-metaphysical (their words typically). Well, actually, some say they are quite "offended".

It's nigh impossible to make everyone happy.

Which isn't my intent. Hard enough to make myself happy, eh?

Oh, I'd hazard a guess what you are picking up is some of my own resistances and reluctances. Writing from the surf's edge of your own fear doesn't have the same presence, same voice.

I'll get to those in a sec. [On second thought, I only addressed maybe one fear in this exchange.]

And I'm spending more time at home alone (sans car in a very very suburban area) and I really thrive around people (you can see why I want the community teahouse), and it's winter (alas no flowers to talk to either), yada yada.

Where do you really stand?  Is CASH so important? When you said you could barely afford to help Wyatt for his trip ne N'lins, was that just a temporary mishap?

A temporary mishap lasting, oh, about six years. I made $0.00 last year. Sure, that's temporary as everything else.

I'm not so sure that I find the strict renunciate path so noble. It has it's own willfulness, and thus it's own darkness. Buddha had gathered quite a few disciples even before the big e-day at the bodhi tree. They'd all abandoned him when he quit being an ascetic.

This is not about cash and not not about cash.

I wrote the other day to Wyatt since he spoke of "wyld adventures" that my life is becoming a "perpetual expedition in grace."

Sometimes grace wants to hand me a check, or give me work. Whom am I to decline the gifts of grace?

I don't tend to talk about the romance part of my life online, but last year a beautiful soul kissed me at the W Hotel (a capitalist, a philathropist) with net worth I'd guess in the 8 figures, and last year a beautiful soul kissed me at the Hotel Utah whom was currently homeless and headed back to Nola to begin entirely anew.

It was interesting noting the reactions of my friends. Everyone had an opinion of whom was worthy and whom was not, typically based on their own opinions and preconceptions revolving money and self-worth and the state of the world.

I fall silent more and more when people ask me to take sides, it's becoming increasingly impossible to choose whom to love anymore. I love people indiscriminately, on both sides, including those I'm not supposed to love, whom I don't even agree with, and who don't even share my ideology.

When I walked into Alex Grey's gallery, the Sacred Chapel of Mirrors, in Manhattan two days after 9/11/06, I knew immediately he was (what is classically termed) awake because in huge lettering in an archway entrance it read:

SURRENDER TO LOVE

I think in the end, all the misguided meanderings that people take on the journey (and boy I have plenty of tales and they're not all pretty and light), is because we suspect there is something true and desirous in that, SURRENDER TO LOVE, and we just don't know how.

There is something that wants to manifest itself in the world through me, we could call it a teahouse, but until you see it yourself, I cannot explain it adequately. If left to my own devices, I think I'd be perfectly content hiding out in a cave in Tibet, or like the
Chasing The Lotus movie triggered for me, was my tendency to escape and go surfing in Bali or Maui or Costa Rica.

Engaging with the world, heck, people might judge me, perceive me as being abnormal. [Which I am ;-)] But this vision isn't mine, it has a life of its own. And it wants to be born.

As to surfing the edge of my own fears, this is what I wrote to a friend:

I'm getting a sense the "lack of money" is a convenient way to get off the hook.

Therefore, whew, I don't have to step up to this big hairy audacious goal and calling. (Do you 'believe' in calling?)

I think I remember grokking that when I saw the "Conversations with God" movie, the main character went through a homeless phase.

But seeing the end of the movie and where his journey took home, I could sympathesize why someone would (unconsciously) chose homelessness rather than touring and speaking and lecturing about God to audiences around the world (out loud!).

Well, ultimately, I guess it's never about the money itself is it? It is what it represents to us.

Still knowing this (not entirely new revelation) hasn't gotten me unstuck yet.

Helpful even to me just to be writing all this down. Thanks!

namaste, e

They write back:

It's never about money.

Just as greenbacks used to be a proxy for gold and now are a proxy for a mythical concept (a dollar is backed by the full faith and credit of the United States—the largest debtor nation on the planet), money is a proxy for labor or craft or service.

Money, unfortunately, is also a proxy for "value" and in this society that sometimes means self-esteem. Your rejection of money could be a rejection of the whole system—not a crazy idea.

But I think you're onto something even deeper when you look at the lack as being a means of releasing you from responsibility. What other, if any, responsibility does it release you from? Other than touring and speaking about God (i.e., or whatever your calling is); what other things don't you have to do because you lack money?

My ideas around 'marketing' are so out there, I'm not sure anyone in the field would consider it marketing. It just looks like talking to people one on one, and going into business with friends to them. So it is. So it is.

I like to keep the moniker of "marketer" around just because it irks so many people. Would it be possible to maybe fall in love with someone (egads, a marketer!) that they're supposed to vilify?

I just read this in my inbox today (funny coincidence):

"Perhaps my dead comedian friend Bill  Hicks had the right angle, "If you work in advertising or marketing; causing  us all to work at jobs we hate just so we can buy shit we don't need (okay,  I'm adlibbing here . . . that last part is stolen from "The Fight Club") --  do the whole freakin' world a favor -- just kill yourself."* (There is no punch line so don't scroll down looking for it.)

*(Okay . . . I'm not REALLY  advocating that you kill yourself (even though Bill was) -- a small flesh  wound will be pennance enough. Could you just find something else --  anything else -- to do for a living? Something with the potential to  actually provide some benefit for humanity? What a concept,  eh?)"

I miss who I thought you were.  But I'll keep reading, hoping to get glimpses of insight that are meaningful.

One day I sincerely hope, we shall cease to fall in love with images of people, and we'll simply love. Thank you for your willingness to stick it out as I go through this roller coaster.

much love, e

p.s. I think it's a whole other exchange to address this statement, but will get to it too:

"I am somewhat offended by the appropriation of spirituality and art by commercial ventures for the sole purpose of enriching the capitalists.  I feel it is ingenuine and expoitative."

image Cecily Brown's Teenage Wildlife

Comments

[keith ray]

re "Could you just find something else -- anything else -- to do for a living? Something with the potential to actually provide some benefit for humanity?"

There is are serious problems which MIGHT be solvable by proper use of marketing: War. Violence. Poverty.

The most effective technique for bring people out of poverty in countries like Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, and many other "third world" nations in Africa and elsewhere, has turned out to micro-lending, rather than government programs. It turns ordinary people into entrepreneurs - people who to sell products, and who need to find buyers.

Marketing could help change the priorities of USA and "first world" nations' spending and aid programs -- stop giving money and weapons to corrupt governments, and start lending money directly to the people who need it.

The mass population in some eastern "Buddhist" nations are so out of touch with Buddhism that they are actually importing westerners to teach meditation. Marketing could help educate people about the true values and practices of Buddhism.

Marketing is a tool that can be used "for good or ill". To help the oppressor or to fight against oppression. To try to get people in touch with humane values of compassion, or to voyeuristically sit around and watch a celebrity will eat live worms on TV.

There's a stupid cliche that says "For every problem there is one solution which is simple, neat and wrong."

I'd like to change it to: "For every problem there is at least one solution which involves fairness, compassion, and respect."

[Danielle]

I think for me the marketing angle adds credibility to the more esoteric spiritual stuff, which by itself would come off as too fluffy and new agey for me.

I discovered you via gapingvoid. What really resonates for me the the rawness you demonstrate from time to time. That's what makes blogging compelling to me, that and the give-and-take between readers and writers =)

[Evelyn Rodriguez]

Hi Keith, Thanks. Ooops, I probably should have clarified and said the Bill Hicks quotes weren't from any reader, but the Nondual Highlights newsletter I get (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights/message/2717)

But it was awfully funny in the context that Nondual Highlights rarely talks about such matters. Almost as if the email was timed just to rub more salt in the wound! Ouch! I don't take life so seriously that I can't take a joke, though.

In fact, usually, I tend to see it as a divine comedy. (Sometimes the joke is on me. But usually I'm in on it.)

I think this exchange raises REAL questions that are in the heart and mind of many, many entrepreneurs and creatives and artists. Am I prostituting, compromising, diluting myself? Am I selling out? etc...

I witnessed a director of a nonprofit community TV and film center in NYC at the Sundance panel say he has trouble getting out there to promote their work. Chris Johnson (of Long Tail) replied that yeah, it can be DISTASTEFUL (exact word), but you have to do it anyway (promote yourself).

What!!!

Distasteful? Why?

In the final analysis, it comes down to talking to people. You cannot coerce anyone - sure that would be distasteful. Sad, because this guy's work was amazing and it's doing wonderful things in the ghetto communities.

Since I tend to disagree with a many marketing implementations, I've watched myself want to check out of the discussion.

But checking out isn't the solution, for me, anyhow. Engagement is. I find a lot of marketing is a scattered statistics games and ineffective especially for smaller, nimbler companies, not to mention that a lot of it isn't very life- and people-affirming. I suppose that's why I continue to want to write about it, though.

I'm really interested in microfinancing and alternative financing to enable more entrepreneurs worldwide. I've been speaking with another friend about putting on some social finance un-conferences. Will keep you in mind.

Danielle, Thanks. Hugh's not one to be hide either. I certainly fit into the marketing community a heck of a lot better than the new age community! They don't get me at all. I'm too straightforward. I'm not into any facades of happiness and light and love, although I am authentically one of the happiest people I know. It's either there or not. Not manufacturing happiness. So sometimes I write in a sad mood, or a confused mood too. It's there, it's life.

I will be checking your blog out more. Love what you're doing with The Organic Cotton Company. I'm into fashion too (Boy you see people roll their eyes when I say that.) Especially beautiful organics. Would love to feature some designers in the teahouse Salon as well. No accident I mentioned Colette's.

[keith ray]

Just watched the TED video of Robert Wright...

Quoting from the summary "He also explains the concept behind his book, "Nonzero": That life is a nonzero sum game, where there can be more than one winner, and that civilization evolved thanks to such endeavors, which reward cooperation, rather than competition. His guarded optimism is tinged with a deep worry over the growing prevalence of grass-roots hatred. His hope: that the intelligent pursuit of self-interest will actually be the world's salvation. Robert Wright is author of "The Moral Animal" and "NonZero." He also hosts an excellent interview series called meaningoflife.tv. (Recorded February 2006 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 19:54)"

I like how he says that (as far he knows) there isn't much bigotry and hatred in people flying in business class - because they do business with all sorts of people. Capitalism may have done more to reduce hatred and racism and bigotry than any other ism.

[YouKnow]

I think you're doing everything right.

[Mary]

Have you guys read the book You Were Born For a Reason? It's based on Buddhist philosophy and answers to all the above! At least, I found my answers there... after searching for many many years.