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Oct 30, 2023Liked by Antonio Melonio

I think the biggest problem for me as a musician is finding the motivation after a long work day. You’re absolutely drained when you come home, so the idea of picking up the banjo or guitar just seems like a step too far, even though I know it will make me happy!

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You've made excellent points here. Most of your analysis is spot on. However, living as I do in a marginal place (eastern Kentucky), where average incomes are lower than the nation, and costs are lower as well, where traditional jobs are few, I find that I actually personally know more real artists: painters, writers, and musicians than ever before in my life. They are all part of the gig economy, so they are not economically secure, but then neither are their neighbors and family members who work for Walmart, or teach school, or are small town business people. They often depend at least part of the time on grant money (either private or government), they may also take part-time jobs that are more traditional, or they have spouses that have some employment.

There's a lot of support from our communities, communities that aren't well off themselves. Local communities come up with some bucks for a mural here and a mural there, for my painter friend Lacy Hale. People like me pay $30 for prints of her paintings that we love, because we can't afford the paintings themselves. Writers like my friend Melissa Helton (a poet), spend a few years teaching at a community college while getting chapbooks published, then find their dream job coordinating writers conferences for a tiny Appalachian non-profit. The same non-profit provides regional writers with the opportunities to teach small groups of folks (either in person or on-line) the craft of writing, where retired college professors like myself, can pay $250 for a number of intensive hours of one-on-one with award winning, published authors and express our creativity. Versatile artists/musicians like John Haywood do tattoos part-time, teach banjo at world reknown music camps, and play in small bands in local anre regional venues, like my local community center in an aging former elementary school, where admittance is free, and the hat is passed for donations for the band, and former addicts bake artisan pizzas, ancient grain breads, and all kinds of sweet goodies that local folks want. There's lots of artist collaborations like between painter Jeff Chapman-Crane and musician/poet/Appalachian dance instructor Carla Gover who are turning one of Carla's beautiful autobiographical songs Red Bird River into a gloriously illustrated children's book.

I'm not trying to compare my friends to Michaelangelo. But they are living fully creative lives, in part because they support a deep, old regional culture and are supported by that culture. They preserve and advance traditional music and stories, tell stories that are deeply resonant with local peoples and stand up for a culture that has long been marginalized by this country.

For the very same reason, I suspect there are lively artistic communities among racially and ethnically marginalized groups. Groups whose music rarely if ever gets a Grammy. And I think that is part of it, what you said about the commercialization and commodification of art, is very true. So the only places that real art and artists flourish is among those groups sufficiently narrow and marginalized so as to not be profitable targets of commercialization.

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The Revolution will not be televised.

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IT is sad isn't it? We are so brainwashed by this idea that we NEED to automate everything because effort is hard. The fact though is people with genuine interests in things....do actually enjoy the process. I recently took a ceramics class and it took forever making anything.....that made our finished works even sweeter.

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I'm with you Antonio. It's been my life's mission to escape the machine -- and I did, although only by working within it for many years, and then stealing a piece to squirrel away...

I wrote about this in my own way just recently in Let’s kill 'content,' and reclaim "growth" →

https://bowendwelle.substack.com/p/the-love-of-strangers-1000

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