How old were you when you went to those writing workshops? Or — more significantly — how old were your fellow students? What part of the country?
Honestly, the only time I encountered serious hardcore dumbass romanticization of poverty was in and around indie/alt rock. I got a couple lifetime’s worth, sure. Still, it was all people still …
How old were you when you went to those writing workshops? Or — more significantly — how old were your fellow students? What part of the country?
Honestly, the only time I encountered serious hardcore dumbass romanticization of poverty was in and around indie/alt rock. I got a couple lifetime’s worth, sure. Still, it was all people still safe and snug in their 20s.
If ever there was a “that shit grows old fast” in life it’s not having money. And if there is any group of people on earth with little tolerance for not having the money of their peers it’s children.
Last thought: I failed to acknowledge how much people often hate 9 to 5. Maybe they’re spoiled entitled brats, but wanting to avoid that grind is, I think, a much greater motivator than any cubicle stigma.
I feel like this is a trick to make me think about how old I am. Washington state and Oregon. About fifteen years ago and ten years ago. Probably a dozen ish people across both fairly small groups who were in their mid and late twenties but they seemed to be able to assert some kind of control just through sheer numbers and recklessness. Also had a comp professor of the same genus. It was before I knew the word Woke but they were probably nascent wokesters who primarily contributed information on how everything was problematic but never wrote anything themselves.
What I mostly dislike/react to is the sense that there’s a class of people who think they are simultaneously too good to work or check their ideas against others but also highly capable and all knowing.
I probably *am* an art type if I lived in a different place, like I write poetry and shit, but I do find now that I somehow just can’t feel comfortable around art people.
Two thoughts (I’m a lot more confident that I’m right about the second):
1) I think the NW US where you’re from may be really unique in neither having the cultural insularity & alarmingly high rates of violence found in some rural homogenous communities (Ozark, Appalachia) nor the histories of racism and racial tension of the rest of the US. (Perhaps I’m being naive.)
You would know much better they me how that would play out, but I wonder if there might be an awareness of class, irrespective of race, that persists or persisted longer where you grew up. (In NYC the idea that Chinese or Russian or Irish-American kids in, say, an honors class may be working class or poor is provocative. And thus the very idea of poverty divorced from identity is.)
This awareness of class would seem to me to be a good thing, but it might also result in a romanticized view of poverty. One that you no longer have in most of the US.
Everything in much of the rest of the country is just about race. (Again: perhaps it is in the NW now too. I know there’s now more racial diversity & immigration.)
Also — and this is going to sound weird, but, oh, it’s true — communities with lots of immigrants and racial minorities tend to be extremely aspirational in way that is contemptuous of poverty. Neither rappers nor immigrant shopkeepers have any illusions about poverty. They want nothing to do with it. That results in a lot less overall romanticization about being financially strapped, but more vulgar materialism.
2) The lower the technical standards of entry for an art form are, the more clowns you’re going to get.
Portrait and landscape painting are going to have less clowns participating than abstract and conceptual art.
Rap MCs are going to have more clowns among their number than tenor sax players or gospel singers.
More poets are going to be clowns than novelists.
And more wannabe novelists are going to be clowns than actual (did the work) novelists.
But that doesn’t mean all poets (or wannabe poets) are clowns. Not at all. It just means the non-clown poets are going to deal with a lot more annoyance from their ostensible peers.
Sure, it beats the problems (tuberculosis, rats, starvation in garrets, no hot water, untreatable venereal diseases) poets often dealt with back when the rigor of rhyme & meter made the entry requirements higher, but it’s still going to be (as you found) incredibly annoying.
How old were you when you went to those writing workshops? Or — more significantly — how old were your fellow students? What part of the country?
Honestly, the only time I encountered serious hardcore dumbass romanticization of poverty was in and around indie/alt rock. I got a couple lifetime’s worth, sure. Still, it was all people still safe and snug in their 20s.
If ever there was a “that shit grows old fast” in life it’s not having money. And if there is any group of people on earth with little tolerance for not having the money of their peers it’s children.
Last thought: I failed to acknowledge how much people often hate 9 to 5. Maybe they’re spoiled entitled brats, but wanting to avoid that grind is, I think, a much greater motivator than any cubicle stigma.
I feel like this is a trick to make me think about how old I am. Washington state and Oregon. About fifteen years ago and ten years ago. Probably a dozen ish people across both fairly small groups who were in their mid and late twenties but they seemed to be able to assert some kind of control just through sheer numbers and recklessness. Also had a comp professor of the same genus. It was before I knew the word Woke but they were probably nascent wokesters who primarily contributed information on how everything was problematic but never wrote anything themselves.
What I mostly dislike/react to is the sense that there’s a class of people who think they are simultaneously too good to work or check their ideas against others but also highly capable and all knowing.
I probably *am* an art type if I lived in a different place, like I write poetry and shit, but I do find now that I somehow just can’t feel comfortable around art people.
Two thoughts (I’m a lot more confident that I’m right about the second):
1) I think the NW US where you’re from may be really unique in neither having the cultural insularity & alarmingly high rates of violence found in some rural homogenous communities (Ozark, Appalachia) nor the histories of racism and racial tension of the rest of the US. (Perhaps I’m being naive.)
You would know much better they me how that would play out, but I wonder if there might be an awareness of class, irrespective of race, that persists or persisted longer where you grew up. (In NYC the idea that Chinese or Russian or Irish-American kids in, say, an honors class may be working class or poor is provocative. And thus the very idea of poverty divorced from identity is.)
This awareness of class would seem to me to be a good thing, but it might also result in a romanticized view of poverty. One that you no longer have in most of the US.
Everything in much of the rest of the country is just about race. (Again: perhaps it is in the NW now too. I know there’s now more racial diversity & immigration.)
Also — and this is going to sound weird, but, oh, it’s true — communities with lots of immigrants and racial minorities tend to be extremely aspirational in way that is contemptuous of poverty. Neither rappers nor immigrant shopkeepers have any illusions about poverty. They want nothing to do with it. That results in a lot less overall romanticization about being financially strapped, but more vulgar materialism.
2) The lower the technical standards of entry for an art form are, the more clowns you’re going to get.
Portrait and landscape painting are going to have less clowns participating than abstract and conceptual art.
Rap MCs are going to have more clowns among their number than tenor sax players or gospel singers.
More poets are going to be clowns than novelists.
And more wannabe novelists are going to be clowns than actual (did the work) novelists.
But that doesn’t mean all poets (or wannabe poets) are clowns. Not at all. It just means the non-clown poets are going to deal with a lot more annoyance from their ostensible peers.
Sure, it beats the problems (tuberculosis, rats, starvation in garrets, no hot water, untreatable venereal diseases) poets often dealt with back when the rigor of rhyme & meter made the entry requirements higher, but it’s still going to be (as you found) incredibly annoying.