LIFESTYLES OF THE (UN)RICH AND THE (IN)FAMOUS

Por Victor Drax 

 

Just so you get an idea of where I’m at, I want to tell you of the deadlines I’m dealing with —and you better forget that most are self-imposed.

 

I have to deliver a new episode, weekly, of the hardboiled serial I write. Sometimes, it’s an easy task and my brain has already figured the road I’m going to traverse once I’m in front of the blank page. Some others, it’s just though, man. I’m writing stories and I’m writing a novel.

 

More background: I’m a lawyer. I went for about six years to college, turned into a full-on vandal and alcohol enthusiast and somewhere along the line, I understood that if I wanted to make money, I needed that degree. The last two years of the college sobered up not only me, but each of the rascals I hung up with (and still do). We survived the extermination of those semesters.

 

Soon after, I landed a job at an important company (“consultant attorney” is my job’s description, if you can believe that) and now I deal with eight hours at an office, about two more of traffic (that has nothing on Calcutta’s), so I can be home at night and flex my creativity muscle. It would be so much easier if I just get home, play some videogame or watch whatever tv show is on, but I just can’t. If I go to sleep without writing a single sentence, without at least an hour of playing on Auf Der Maur, I feel like the biggest fucking yerk in history.

 

Ozzy Osbourne got it right, “life won’t wait for you, my friend.” And I need to make a mark, as an artist, before the zombies rise and civilization stops existing.

 

Trying to write a coherent plot, with good dialog lines and decent descriptions under stress is akin to having sex with a gun to your head. You may perform, but it doesn’t means it’s any good.

 

I had two other writing projects that call for my attention and one of them can’t be ignored. Third project: you’re on hold. When do I play the bass, you may wonder? Each time I can, which usually means “daily, about an hour after writing, and Saturday non-stop”. I go to bed tired and wake up feeling like I wrestled on an ultimate fighting cage. Drink a couple of painkillers and here we go again.

 

A couple of weeks ago, I saw an interview with John 5, Rob Zombie’s current guitarist. He said something that really got to me. Speaking about his days as a musician trying to make it in the scene, he said that it was tough, “but I just wanted to be a working musician.” It expresses perfectly what an artist should strive for. Not fame (certainly, not fame), not groupies, not drugs. You should work your ass off to be the best entertainer you can be. So you can be a guy that lives of his performance. A working artist.

 

All the artists I know, fall into one of two categories: the ones who make money for something other than art (like my job, or coming from a wealthy family), and those who decided they would pursue academically the arts, in a country that couldn’t care less about its writers, sculptors, painters and so on. Yeah, that’s the group of the unemployed, broke artists.

 

They say that machines will achieve a human-like level of intelligence the day the understand arts and can create art of their own. Makes sense. A computer, with its logical algorithms wouldn’t understand why would you want to dedicate yourself to the craft: you work day after day, (when you could be watching a movie, for example), creating a product that nobody asked you to make and for which there may or may not be an audience. Forget about monetary compensation; even in the United States of America, the land that produced some of the best writers of the past century, only a handful of very fortunate authors get to publish a book and make a living. Not to mention musicians that will never get to quit their day jobs. Inside our Venezuelan borders, I can name only two bands that can live of their music.

 

What’s the purpose, then?

 

There is no definitive answer, it varies for everyone. Some are chasing fame and attention, some are looking for money and some already abandoned the dream. For me, is the thrill I get when I can entertain some else. Push you over the edge of your seat and make you wonder “what the fuck is going to happen now?” If I play a tune and you headbang, or tap your feet to the music, my enjoyment is twofold. I love the rush, the adrenaline that my brain won’t produce, unless stimulated.

 

But to make that happen and keep myself away from eating only canned food, it’s like a wise man once said: “punk rock won’t pay the bills, so well, gotta get started early.”