The Lost Career Guide (Early, Emerging, Mid-Career, Established, Not Established But Still Kicking, Post-Humous, Alien, Etc., Etc.)

It’s true —
I did go under the turnstyle
without swiping my card,
but it still had money on it.

It just wasn’t working that day,
and I had all my luggage,
and I needed to get to
the airport,

and then the MTA cop
who wrote my citation
asked me, “What’s your occupation?”
and I said, “Artist,”

and he looked at me like I was nuts.
Then, he scribbled on his notepad
and snarled at me, looking me right in the eyes,
“Don’t you mean unemployed?”

You know what, mister…

This wouldn’t be so much of an issue
if this wasn’t the same exact conversation that
I have had pretty much every year for the last
twenty years with my own mother.

“No, Mom, I’m like a professional artist.
And I’m like important and talented.
And I do stuff, and people pay me money for it.
And, ugh, never mind. What happened on Good Morning
America today?”

Yeah, I get it.

I’m an artist.
I’m misunderstood.
I’m a cliché.
This is what this whole thing is about.

But dear artist, no one can prepare
you for this.

You are your own weird little mutant
star constellation traversing the cold and lonely
infinite universe just trying your damnedest
to emit a tiny peep of light.

You outlast all the a-holes who told you
you weren’t very good,
you weren’t gonna make any money,
or that they were just staring at your breasts the whole time.

You keep putting together new projects and proposals,
even though each attempt feels like you’re trying to
erect a gigantic fortress out of toothpicks and tape.

And for collaborators, you don’t know whether to go with
the jaded jerk who mandates that no one looks them
directly in the eyes or the eager young’un who is willing
to Youtube anything you need them to.

Dear artist, more likely than not, no one will be
there to guide you through these decisions.

And you will turn your head away while scrolling through Instagram
so you will not see the artist who got the commission for that Chee-tos commercial
or that other artist who’s doing that fancy residency at that Tuscan villa
with some vampire count billionaire.

You will listen to your Youtube self-help videos and repeat:
“I am magnificent just as I am. I am magnificent just as I am.”

And you will teach your heart to not break when the artists
you thought were so amazing quit or when your mentor
stops believing in you or when the medical fundraisers come flooding in.

You will learn to steady your smile when the artist who used to
look up to you surpasses you and name-drops a bunch
of celebrities she doesn’t really know the next time you see her.

Dear artist, you are the living embodiment of
Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive.”

I will survive
Oh, as long as I know how to love
I know I'll stay alive
I've got all my life to live
And I've got all my love to give

Hey Hey

(which by the way was written by songwriter Dino Fekaris immediately
after being fired from his seven year contract with Motown, true story)

Dear artist (like Dino) you continue on.

But the thing is the better you get,
the worse you realize you are.
What kind of crazy logic is that?!

And just when you think your wizened experience
will surely garner respect, you keep getting told that
you don’t know how to do what you have already done
by people who haven’t done any of these things – what?!

And this will just get worse and worse over time.

This does not move linearly at all.

Dear artist,
have no fear.

You will find your patron in the man who has made his
fortune in genetically modifying chickens so large
that they can no longer balance their own bodyweight or
the impresario who built racetracks for greyhounds
or the early innovator of internet porn when
all you could do was move around dirty little pixels.

You’ll hobnob with them at the gala in the dress that
you bought for fifty bucks at the consignment shop
(tags still on) and marvel that a red carpet is literally
just red vinyl carpet with a bunch of photographers
around it, while the rest of life passes by, sneezing
and shouting on cellphones and selling vegetables.

And then, dear artist, you may even find yourself
trapped in your house for an indeterminate amount of time
due to a lethal virus that has taken over the planet.

All assumptions blown apart.

Yet, here you are
every day.

You with your canvases
You with your movements
You with your prototypes
You with your sketches
You with your manuscripts
You with your scores

and nothing else
at long last.

This odd quiet,
which allows you to feel for once
this strange sensation
of what you are here for,

if even only for you.

It is certain.
It is strong.

You are here

to make
to make
to make