I wanted to post a quote from Jiddu Krishnamurti who if I remember correctly once said something to the effect of:
An artist should be like Beethoven. The music just flowed out of him, and he could neither stop it nor control it.
But I can’t find the source, I’m just going by memory, and it was from a long time ago. It doesn’t matter though if he really said it, because it’s the quote I wanted to post.
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When I was 21, my friend Andrew and I made a four hour drive one Saturday morning from New York to Germantown, Maryland to see a Korean Buddhist monk. I heard about the monk from my Korean college roommate whose mom knew him. Andrew and I had been reading books about Buddhism for the preceding year and thought it would be worthwhile to see the real thing. We also had various anxieties about our lives and figured maybe he could offer some guidance.
When we arrived at the farm where he lived, we parked and stepped out of the car. I don’t want to exaggerate, but even in the lot which had to be 40 yards from the main building was this strong feeling like you could just fall to the ground and start weeping for the sorrows of your life.
We walked to the door of the monastery and knocked. A few seconds later, a bald, 50-something Korean man opened it, looked out at us with a blank face. We awkwardly told him we had come to see him. In a thick Korean accent he said today was the wrong day for us, come back tomorrow and shut the door. We stood there dumbfounded. We had woken up at 6 am and driven four hours. He was an enlightened monk. He couldn’t just turn us away.
Nervously, I knocked again. He came back out, same blank look. I told him we had driven all the way from New York. He motioned for us to come in, and we followed.
Inside were maybe 25 Koreans all waiting to see the monk whose name it turned out was Dr. Shin. The Koreans had filled a large wooden table with a massive buffet of Korean food, and Andrew and I were invited to help ourselves which we did. People were individually or in couples going into a small meditation room where Dr. Shin sat and attended to them. After at least an hour, someone motioned to us it was our turn.
We were there for probably 5-10 minutes. I don’t remember who spoke first, or the entirety of the conversation, only a few snippets which have stayed with me. I told him I didn’t really know what I wanted to do with my life. I thought maybe I wanted to be a writer. He laughed out loud. “You want to be artist?” he said with his thick accent. “You pumping gas. Hahahahahah!” Then he looked at me seriously, and said, “Business and law. You study business and law.”
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I’m 53 years old as I type this in October of 2024, and my “job” now is to write and talk about things as I see fit. I started my Substack in 2020, and while my first post was about large numbers, my second one was more from the heart. I create for a “living”, and I suppose that makes me an artist of sorts. But when I think back to the words of Dr. Shin, he was 100 percent right.
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Most people should not try to be artists. You can’t easily make a living at it. It’s the wrong way to go about achieving status or security in society. There are some people who simply have no choice. They live for what they do, and even if they die broke and alone, they could not have done otherwise. Those are artists.
So what the hell am I doing?
I belong to a relatively small minority, those with something to say. I was always like this, even during the visit with Dr. Shin. But in my 20s and 30s I could not have done it. I needed to contribute something, get the reward part out of the way. I lacked the confidence and conviction to create whether or not anyone were interested in my work or wanted to compensate me for it. And unlike real artists, I had a choice. I don’t know if I could have dealt with a real job, but helping run a small fantasy sports business, something I loved, was possible for me, and I was lucky enough to find it.
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Now I’m beyond that phase. I have enough money, a partner, a daughter and a dog. I like recognition and paychecks as much as the next person, but I’m not thirsty. I’ll say what I think (mostly) without regard for how it’ll affect my readership or reputation. I can open my mind and let the ideas out. Maybe it’s not quite like Beethoven, but more along the lines of Jorge Luis Borges who said:
I do not write for a select minority, which means nothing to me, nor for that adulated platonic entity known as ‘The Masses’. Both abstractions, so dear to the demagogue, I disbelieve in. I write for myself and for my friends, and I write to ease the passing of time.