{"id":4990,"date":"2009-11-04T12:00:54","date_gmt":"2009-11-04T17:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/mojo\/?p=1994"},"modified":"2025-07-29T11:24:00","modified_gmt":"2025-07-29T16:24:00","slug":"everything-is-still-biased-against-the-lone-artist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/blog\/everything-is-still-biased-against-the-lone-artist\/","title":{"rendered":"Everything is still biased against the lone artist."},"content":{"rendered":"

I didn\u2019t say it. Someone who shall remain nameless said that to me, and it started me thinking about The Lone Artist.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been to New Orleans, Paris, Venice Beach, New York, London, Amsterdam, and other places where The Lone Artist sets about attempting to earn a living or at least approbation from a crowd of strangers walking by.<\/p>\n

\"\"
In Paris, it was the Ecole des Beaux-Arts students drawing Mona Lisa in pastels on the sidewalk, their hats out for coins.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"
In New Orleans, it was a pair of pre-teen boys tap dancing on a street corner, under the watchful eye of their mother, a trumpet player on a corner down the street, and an artist setting up shop in the middle of the St. Louis Cathedral courtyard, right under Jackson’s shadow.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"
In Amsterdam, it was the scantily-clad prostitutes in the plate-glass windows along the canal. (Okay, as \u201cartist\u201d and \u201clone,\u201d that one\u2019s questionable, but it\u2019s vivid, ain\u2019t it?)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"
In London, it was the\u2014what is this guy? Is this classified as pantomime? Definitely performance art. (Shut up. I like mimes.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"
In New York, it was the oddball music played by street musicians.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"
In Venice Beach, it was a dude who charged $5 to create origami magic with one strand from one palm frond. I knew it was a living sculpture that would die in an hour, but I bought it anyway because it was so different and \u2026 unexpected. I admired that he could do it in seconds right in front of my eyes, I admired the work itself, and I kept it for the hour it lasted, then threw it away. That $5 was very well spent.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In a lot of ways, I like being a lone artist. When I go to authors\u2019 websites and read about the difficulties they have working with a publisher, I\u2019m glad. When I go to readers\u2019 websites and read about how sad they are when a favorite author gets cut off mid-series, I\u2019m glad. When I sit down to write and realize that I can do anything I want without having to account to a sales staff, I\u2019m glad. When I know that the readership I\u2019m gathering one by one, to whom I am ever so grateful, now has enough faith in me to go where I take them, I\u2019m glad.<\/p>\n

There is one respect I really don\u2019t like it. I don\u2019t like the near absence of distribution. But \u2026 that\u2019s about the only way I can think of that I don\u2019t like it. After all, a street performer can only play to the audience that walks by.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not easy. Some days it\u2019s damned depressing. I count on the readers to talk to me and remind me that there is something of worth in what I do, and believe me, I remember it. I count up those emails and screen shots and snippets of conversation here and there, and I keep them, put them in my hard drive bank like coins in my hat.<\/p>\n

So when bedtime comes (if<\/em><\/strong> it comes) and I fall in bed exhausted from everything I have to do to be a lone artist, it\u2019s the good kind of exhaustion.<\/p>\n

Howard Roark laughed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I didn\u2019t say it. Someone who shall remain nameless said that to me, and it started me thinking about The Lone Artist. I\u2019ve been to New Orleans, Paris, Venice Beach, New York, London, Amsterdam, and other places where The Lone Artist sets about attempting to earn a living or at least approbation from a crowd […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-craftsmanship"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4990"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4990"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4990\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16465,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4990\/revisions\/16465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}