Well-paid wage slave? 01/04/85


 

I’m having a hard time balancing work with my writing.

I haven’t written anything of substance in days, caught up with what I do for a living  on  the technical aspects of trying to put out our two-bit ink-stained literary magazine. (most of my weekly salary from my job goes to paying printing costs).

So much labor for so little response.

We get feedback, but it floats in slowly.

I live by the old Orwellian adage that if you keep badgering people they will respond.

Respectability comes from a continuous attack.

Yet to maintain that attack while working these crazy hours is too much.

I see trouble on the horizon with new management coming to my place of work. I fear they will discover how much money I make, even though I believe the salary is fair. The new manager may see me as too high priced.

I ache to create.

It is as much an urge in my life as eating or sleeping.

But I get no pleasure from writing when I am exhausted.

I get no connection with the world within myself out of which all of my creations come.

We got snow tonight. This means I’ll have less work so I can go in later.

The foolish man believes he’s saving money on reduced salaries – even though he won’t really see the payroll until Friday, when I’m sure he’ll flip.

Capitalistic society doesn’t pay most workers well – not for labor anyway. Ideas, yes. Management sustains itself. But the lowly must always pay the price for being low, for being less ambitious, for being satisfied with simple work.

This concept undermined the concept of craft in the last century, as industry geared itself up behind mass cheap labor. The American Civil War didn’t end slavery, we simply saw slavery redefined and moved north.

Creativity has a hard time flowering even in the flowerpot of a well-paid slave.

Exhaustion wears you down so that it is easier to lie down and turn on the TV, which, of course, explains why we have fewer and fewer great artist these days and more technicians.

I struggle to feed, so deprive my art.

Is it any wonder that the renaissance occurred only when a wealthy class rose to patronize artists, giving artists a chance to work at their art and nothing else.

Contemporary art feeds off universities and the handful of grants dropped by generous rich. With the cost rising in the universities (as well as the right wing take over that is shifting away from thought to business interests), I see less hope for the future there.

Michael (Alexander) ranted on about similar themes, telling me how he, and intellectual, chose to avoid those limitations and not allow his mind to be controlled. He reads a lot and studies his art with such fervor I have come to envy him.

I am so weary, I can barely keep my eyes open to write this, even after several hours of rest.

 

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