Sometimes
as a working artist, you have a meeting with an Industry Person. This
is someone whose job is to buy the work of performing artists. There
are plenty of nice ones, so I'm not knocking them per se.
Without fail, though, they always ask this question:
"What's next
for you?"
They want to know
what your next project is, what your next show will be, the next
direction for your work. Why do they always ask this? Probably a few
reasons. Not being an Industry Person, I have to hazard guesses.
Perhaps one reason
is to take the pressure off the work you are currently trying to sell
them. Maybe Industry Person feels the truth of things: that selling
one's performance work is stressful and it's a buyer's market and
that sucks because that's a lot of pressure pressing down on
something that just wants to flutter and breathe and be. Maybe the
conversation got heavy and the Industry Person likes it light. So
they try to focus on the future, hoping it's less confronting to talk
about than your current present.
Also, they probably
want to know if your next product is something they might want to
buy. Either in addition to or instead of what you're currently
offering.
Hey,
who can blame them? Industry People want what we all want: good
working relationships with colleagues. When they find someone who
meets the basic requirements for Good Colleague—you answer emails,
you can spell, you treat them courteously no matter what's going on
in your life—they want to know if they can continue to have a
working relationship with you. It's way easier than trying to find
someone else who is
courteous and can spell. They want the nice option they already know.
The problem is only
for us, the artists. Frankly, thinking about our commercial
viability, thinking about our work as a series of products, well, it
might just kill what we do—kill it dead.
Here's
an example I can think of: um, myself! I came up with a good show.
It's cheap (solo, with minimal baggage), innovative, and fun. It's
led to a lot of touring and performing opportunities all over the
place. I did one good one! I win! But of course you never win.
The thing is, that might be the
only show I've got in me. Seriously. I mean, maybe, at least. I
definitely might not have another solo show in me—see every blog
post I've ever written about how fricking lonely solo-touring can be.
These days I'm focusing more on teaching, exploring local performance
opportunities, writing. I've also become way more interested in
interactive experience design, escape rooms and games. All of this
boils down to me not being able to tell an Industry Person What's
Next.
This is what I tend
to say: "You know, I still really love doing this character and
this show—it still feels really fresh to me, and although I'm
interested in a lot of different things, I don't actually know
what's next."
Sure, it feels
momentarily bad, when you realize that you might not be a viable
product, that you may not be an Industry Person's best bet for
those long-term relationships, that if you don't have a What's Next,
in their eyes, you barely have a What's Now.
But we have to
honor where we are, and what the Muses have already given us. We
can't get too greedy in this life. We don't have to apply capitalist
principles to our art-making, just because other people do. Just
because it feels gratifying to our capitalist veins, our capitalist
capillaries, to have those moments of capitalist blood beating
through the body UNHHHH, SOMEBODY'S PAYING ME MONEY FOR MY ART
UNNNHHHHH. Yeah, it's fricking awesome. Does it mean you need to
think of yourself as a product farting out products on somebody
else's idea of a schedule? Yeah, have fun with that. You see what
happened to Season 3 of "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" (and if you
haven't seen, for satan's sake DON'T WATCH SEASON 3). You see what
happens to every artist who has to crank shit out on the regular. Art
does not respond to factory conditions. I mean, neither do people,
once we start really going for this train of thought. But seriously.
Maybe it's fine to
not know what's next. I'm not saying it's fine, like, you'll still
get Industry People to return your emails. Most of the time, I have
no idea how to get Industry People to return my emails. They do when
they want to, they don't when they don't.
I'm saying it's
fine like you're still probably a worthwhile artist, even if you
don't have another Insert- Artform-Here all ready to pitch. You've
made something valuable that gave you and a lot of other people joy.
Once in a while, in your dark nights—with the unknown unfolding in
front of you, like a ribbon from a future birthday party for a friend
you don't yet know—focus fully on what you've already done, and let
it surround you, and just sometimes, let it be enough.