Lifers, Dayjobbers, and the Independently Wealthy: A Letter to a Former Student

Reminds me of a couple of married friends of mine. The wife played a classical musical instrument (e.g., not an electric guitar) and had her sights set on being a professional. While working towards that she did a lot of teaching&#x2F;practising&#x2F;etc, and her students would often say something along the lines of &quot;I&#x27;m so envious of all this time you have to practice music! How are you able to do it?!&quot; and her reply was always a bit of a let-down&#x2F;reality check for them: &quot;my husband works in tech.&quot;<p>Not quite independently wealthy, but I imagine there&#x27;s a fair few artists out there in a similar position.

As someone who tried the music-or-nothing approach for several years after college and two years in ended up with semi-regular panic attacks, persistent existential dread, and crippling anxiety over finances, I can&#x27;t recommend getting a day job enough. It saddens me to think of all the creative work I could be doing and all the artistic growth I could be seeing instead of developing marketing software, but at least I&#x27;m able to pay my bills, maintain a relationship, and generally live a life that consists of more than just obsessing over music. Less existential dread, too, which helps with focus when I do work on art after work and on the weekends.

FWIW the open source scene (at least in the US) can often have very similar dynamics. I believe it was Ashley Williams who put it best by saying that in the Rust community (where I am), one&#x27;s influence is determined by one&#x27;s free time. I&#x27;ve noticed over time that in certain areas it can very much be those with the least experience on a subject (but the most free time) who wield the most influence.

&gt;&gt; If anyone should have a shot in the various New York music scenes first and foremost, it should be local kids like Billy.If anyone should have a shot in the various New York music scenes first and foremost, it should be local kids like Billy.<p>New York? A city founded on repeated waves of immigration. The city that put &quot;give us your tired masses&quot; on a big statue in the harbor. New York is not a city setup for locals. It is and has always been a dynamic city for new people doing new things. Being &quot;local&quot; isn&#x27;t the advantage it is in other areas.

The article mentions Philip Glass, but not his work as a plumber, featuring this delightful anecdote he told in an interview:<p>“While working, I suddenly heard a noise and looked up to find Robert Hughes, the art critic of Time magazine, staring at me in disbelief. ‘But you’re Philip Glass! What are you doing here?’ It was obvious that I was installing his dishwasher and I told him I would soon be finished. ‘But you are an artist,’ he protested. I explained that I was an artist but that I was sometimes a plumber as well and that he should go away and let me finish.”

&gt; It’s because of this harsh reality that romanticizing the lifer lifestyle in 21st century Brooklyn, or any other major American city, as anything other than the struggle it is can be incredibly dangerous. Millennials and Zoomers have been sold the lie that the big cities remain a bastion for cutting edge arts and culture, let alone that they are even livable for working artists. What year do they expect us to believe it is? The New York Times loves to gloat about the local renaissance happening in Bushwick in the Arts Section while covering a tech CEO who recently bought a brownstone in Bed-Stuy for a cool five million in the Real Estate section.<p>A unique paragraph. People fall in love with a story they’ve never been apart of, never will be apart of, that is told by people who only caught of glimpse of it.

I mentioned OSS in a different comment, but it&#x27;s not the only thing I&#x27;ve noticed this with. Politics at any level in the US (local, state, or national) falls into the same situation regardless of party.<p>Activism takes time and resources to be successful and get your name out, and the moral status attached to it creates a similar set of incentives such that you end up with the same pattern of lifers who are perpetually broke, independently wealthy folks who can be heavily involved and live decently at the same time, and folks with a dayjob who are involved but never really wield much influence on any level.<p>It&#x27;s an interesting problem and I&#x27;d argue it serves as evidence that this happens to anything with attached status. Journalism I&#x27;ve heard has the issue as well.

“In the deepest hour of the night, confess to yourself that you would die if you were forbidden to write. And look deep into your heart where it spreads its roots, the answer, and ask yourself, must I write?” ― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet<p>Reminds me of that quote. Rilke, a poet, was an apprentice to, Auguste Rodin, a sculptor, who taught Rilke how to be an artist. Although different disciplines, the nature of creativity and its manifestations are the same.

I don’t see what “the game is rigged” adds to an otherwise positive message, let alone why it comes first.<p>Why is it somehow bad that musicians need a day job? There are a lot of aspiring musicians out there compared to the audiences waiting for them to perform. A day job is a quite reasonable way to make sure they contribute something to society while we’re waiting to see if they are truly talented or not.<p>Would we have the same feelings about the “rigged” brewing industry that doesn’t give a young brewer a chance to develop his craft? After a certain point it seems like we’re forgetting that a job is about a contribution to society, not just an expression of some inner identity.

This doesn&#x27;t just resonate with creatives - the startup &#x2F; path to tech entrepreneurship is structured in a very similar way. I&#x27;ve seen lifers, trust funders and day jobbers succeed and fail in different ways, raise funds or bootstrap with nothing for years. Obviously the trust fund kids succeed substantially more often than the lifers or day jobbers

Yes, that&#x27;s the point of making money: so that your loved ones (probably kids) could do art or whatever else.<p>What&#x27;s the point of it all if you can&#x27;t invest in your loved ones? Are you a bad person for loving your kids more then some other random kid that they would be competing against? I fail to see anything bad about this.

The indie developer from two weeks ago[1] needed to hear this.<p>1: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=36505035">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=36505035</a>

I never knew Julian Casablancas was a trust fund baby, but knowing that makes a lot of sense out of The Strokes in hindsight.

Great, practical advice. I do think however that by 2030, UBI will be the norm in many wealthy countries, and thus more people will be able to pursue their passions rather than having to sell their soul as dayjobbers to make money for corporations and rich people.

Elizabeth Gilbert has a good take on this: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=0g7ARarFNnw">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=0g7ARarFNnw</a>

&gt; Knowing that the game is rigged is liberating!<p>&gt; how should you be expected to earn a living using their platforms unless you find a way to game the system? Do you have 20 smartphones lying around, per chance?<p>This is the message I&#x27;d take away. Once you learn that the whole capitalist hellscape operates in approximately the same way, you can start to explicitly target its mechanisms in order to improve your life.<p>Having moral flexibility helps so much. Being actively willing to &quot;fuck over&quot; arbitrary, faceless entities makes all the difference. If you start looking at the law in terms of &quot;how much does it cost to do whatever I want&quot;, then you are now effectively playing by the same rules as those who seek to control your life.

Nice essay, but some of the contemporary examples in this paragraph about the independenlty wealthy are not really that compelling:<p><i>I’m not saying wealthy people can’t make incredible artists. Without Marcel Duchamp’s monthly allowance from his father throughout his adult life, we would never have Dada. Giacinto Scelsi was literally the heir and Duke of La Spezia castle estate. Something more contemporary? Grimes’ mother was a Crown Prosecutor, the Canadian equivalent of a District Attorney, in Vancouver. Frankie Cosmos’ dad is the guy from Wild Wild West, no, not Will Smith, the other guy. Julian Casablancas’ father ran New York’s top super modeling agency while young Julian hung out at the kid’s table with Ivanka Trump at Christmas time. The list goes on.</i><p>The argument is supposed to be that these kids didn&#x27;t have to worry about paying the rent, so they were able to devote more time to their craft. But I don&#x27;t think some of the contemporary examples listed were necessarily like that.<p>Take Grimes -- a Crown Prosecutor is a public servant, so you can look up their average pay ranges: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www2.gov.bc.ca&#x2F;gov&#x2F;content&#x2F;careers-myhr&#x2F;all-employees&#x2F;pay-benefits&#x2F;salaries&#x2F;salarylookuptool&#x2F;legal-judiciary&#x2F;crown-counsel-level-3" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www2.gov.bc.ca&#x2F;gov&#x2F;content&#x2F;careers-myhr&#x2F;all-employee...</a> . That&#x27;s definitely a solid middle class life, but not exactly generational wealth. Now, compared to a poor kid who has to take on jobs in high school to support their family, I&#x27;m sure she had more time and less stress in her teenage years which let her practice more, but there are lots and lots of middle class children who have that level of free time which they devote to all sorts of extracurriculars.<p>Moreover, Grimes, Casablancas, and Cosmos blew up when they were in their very early 20s: Cosmos released her debut studio album at 20, Grimes at 22, Casablancas at 23. So, despite any family wealth they may have had, it&#x27;s not like they spent years and years of their adult lives living off their parents&#x27; support, or at least not any more so than hundreds of thousands of college students do every year. Of course, they had it easier than kids who cannot even afford to go to college, or who are working 20 hours a week to pay their way, but I&#x27;m not sure it&#x27;s at all comparable to Duchamp or Scelsi.<p>Maybe there&#x27;s an argument that social connections helped them to get their record deals, but the argument presented doesn&#x27;t seem to apply.

I wonder if there is any artistic benefit by marrying the arts with a deeply capitalist system.<p>Obviously as this article mentions its not great for the artists themselves, but perhaps the cutthroat nature of the industry makes it so that only the best of the best rise to the top, even if it means it comes from an independently wealthy musician.

As someone who has spent an amazing amount of time coding, it&#x27;s not because someone was paying my rent. It&#x27;s because I sacrificed things to be able to work on my art.<p>I have never had my rent paid for. I did not have a secret pile of cash or someone funding me.<p>&quot;Everyone who made it when I couldn&#x27;t was secretly wealthy&quot; is an interesting take but it seems more like coping mechanism than reality.