Showbiz or...

[worldwidese]

With all this talk about getting crowds, keeping crowds and getting the money, i.e. the more mercenary side of things, I am led to speculate about what happened to the more artistic area, i.e. actually learning to put on a great show.

If I am going to have to put so much time and effort into the "hats" aspect, maybe I should just go out and sell real estate, or cars(!)where the financial rewards would be so much greater and time spent so much shorter.

Financially secure, I could now use the time saved on improving my artistic skills which would be more emotionally rewarding. Or doing shows for Charity, or for small gatherings of my adoring fans.

Or I could also try to get some paid gigs, where my show is given an actual monetary value, and I would have the satisfaction of having the audience stay to the finale, and giving me a great round of applause, instead of having a lot of them slink off so they don't have to put money in the hat.

Remember what Shakespeare wrote- "The Play's the thing!"

[Steven Ragatz]

I don't think that money and art are necessarily mutually exclusive, and I certainly don't think that it diminishes one's art to make money with it. In the street performing arena, letting the audience give you tips at the end of the show isn't just for your benefit. They want to participate in the event, both during the show and after, and if you have done your job well (that art stuff) they will have a strong empathetic sense towards you and wish to see you succeed. Applause is one way to reward good performance behavior, and tips is another. Denying either is like interrupting someone who is trying to say thank-you.

Show quality is subjective. If enough people clap, then the audience as a whole are more likely to believe that the show is "good". Equally, as people see the money pile up in the hat, their evaluation of the show can't help but be influenced. I may be wrong, but it seems to me that I've never seen someone who looked in the hat, then decided not to give because it looked like I had "enough". On the contrary, when the money comes in, it seems to pull in even more.

The audience wants you to succeed - both artistically and financially. It is important to work the two in parallel. More to the point, the reality is that one must support one's self to continue to perform, and living off of tips isn't so great that many can afford to not fight for every bit any way they can.

I don't think anybody wins if the world gains another car salesman.

Steven Ragatz

[scot]

#1 you can get laid more on the street
#2 people have different approaches at the same goal and different goals with the same approach. Do the real estate thing if you want. Have fun.
#3 every job can have aspects that are good for your soul. Really, it doesn't matter. Nothing matters. Life has no direction or meaning. Make some big hats, go poor. Die.

[Butterfly Man]

Since Martin is away eating crab ...

I stumbled across this today ... I have no idea when Martin wrote it, but its kind of apropos:


"We exist purely as vehicles for our genes; our consciousness, our imaginations, our creations: all these are simply manifestations of our genetically implanted instincts for survival. We believe we exist because it makes us better replicators. There is no other reason for existence, no god, no destiny, no karma.

Our lives are neither random nor controlled: choice is an illusion, but so is fate. We simply operate, like the very intelligent automatons we are. Our minds are exquisitely adapted to solving large and complex problems, the bulk of which come from our interspecies competition with each other.

Our societies are hives, built through the collaboration of thousands and millions of minds. As a species we are genetically so similar, due to near-extinction around 50,000 years ago, that we are practically clones. All our notions of "ethnicity" and "color" are as meaningful as separating people by hair patterns or toe size.

Our species is incredibly successful mainly because we have managed to turn our technological prowess onto ourselves, creating a feedback loop that has not stopped since we invented fire and freed our jaws to shrink and make space for a larger brain.

Finally, although we all feel unique, we are in fact designed as team players, male and female, young and old adopting clear and comfortable roles that are so innate they are universal in all human cultures. Men solve technical problems, women organize social networks. Young men learn and work; young women dance and like to look pretty. Old women gossip and old men accumulate power.

These truths, though self-evident, are heresy because they seem to imply (wrongly) that life has no meaning and personal endeavor has no value. Au contraire, life is filled with meaning, and personal endeavor all that makes it possible.

Just because you don't understand fluid mechanics does not mean you cannot enjoy surfing a great wave."

P.S. Yes, it was one sentence.

[martin ewen]

Would you like sugar with that dichotomy

I didn't write that,I found it on a fortune cookie.

Street performance is the same thing to many people for different reasons.

Its a source of income and a creative outlet.

Say you grew up in an inner city without any real education and fairly narrow choices and took the plunge and grabbed a skill and a generic template and used it to travel the world using the tools and timing that have been honed by decades if not centuries. You might focus on what maximises your hat because your hat was the passport that afforded your freedom and effecting that gives you a sense that your show belongs to you and that you now own it and perhaps even more, any manipulation at all helps convince you that your creative rather than desperate and brave and curious.

Or the other extreme being someone who (for their own usually sad and twisted reasons) uses the concept of street theatre to escape reality by creating an alternative that is powerful enough to encase an audience.
These performers tend not to care so much about what they earn because what they do is more important than how the audience responds.

Sometimes these performers grasp of their own realities exceeds the normal demands of the digestive system and they can survive for many many years simply on hope, a belief in themselves and semi-regular affirmation from strangers.

Most performers are waxing or waning somewhere inbetween.

Its easier for someone not making money to focus on making money than it is for someone making money to focus on the creative content of their shows and risk a lower income.
But there are examples of really creative street performers who effortlessly accept huge hats from grateful audiences.
And it remains my lifes work to find one.

[Mr.Taxi Trix]

The mix you seek, of creative blisswalking and pragmatic hatfocus, is an intersting hybrid to cultivate. though in replicating myself 15 years ago, I lost much of the freedom to explore heedless of financial feedback, and for all intents switched to the hatfocus, I also found some measure of creative satisfaction in upping that discernable number as much as I could.

I"ve certainly met, loved, and interviewed artists of the blisswalk path. They invariably enjoy it when you buy them lunch. On the other side of the coin, i invariably enjoy it when someone buys me lunch. Some things don't change.

A number of years ago, I sensed the malestorm (if that's the word I'm looking for) of creative stagnation in my performing life, and began to sculpt in stone, just to escape the pathetic whoring for dollars it can be for me. (My mortgage knows no mercy.) This has brought a truckload of satisfaction, and oddly, I'm finding the challange of marketing the sculpture is as near as dammit to a creative effort. Photoshop rocks.

Ita an intersting line of inquiry. If I had the money, would I quit performing? In a New York minute. I'm over it. This level of detachment, incedently, improves my show. Go figure.

[Chance]

faster than you thought

Martin - Taking a page from the Trevor playbook I see.

You ought to just change it back to the original text. Already caught the part where you confess to copying and pasting your immortal words of wisdom... just as you accused me of doing last week in the "campaign" thread.

What's next, going back to change all your other mis-prints as well? There's quite a few. Get the coffee ready, it's gonna take a while.

And while you're at it, get that dictionary out that you're so fond of quoting from and look up hypo-, no, hippo-, no, hepo-, no, aw shit, never mind.

[martin ewen]

chance, you're so funny..you should be a magician

I'll take the 'nevermind' option thanks

[Chance]

I need your approval like I need my sack removed

Martin - Coming from you that is without a doubt the highest praise you've ever paid anyone here at p.net.

I'm gonna go barf now...