[B5JMS] attn. JMS: A TV writing question...

[b5jms at cs.columbia.edu]

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From: "Laura Appelbaum" <l-appelbaum at mindspring.com>
Date: Wed, 2 Jul 2003 22:26:09 +0000 (UTC)
Lines: 62

"Jms at B5" <jmsatb5 at aol.com> wrote in message
news:20030701005210.06694.00002146 at mb-m19.aol.com...
> >BTW, please don't try to infer that I'm unacquainted with the arts. I was
> >formerly a music major (bassoon performance with voice minor)
> .......
> >While being processed for
> >discharge, I cross-trained as an illustrator, producing posters, cover
art,
> >illustrations for training materials
> .............
> >I'm able to perform
> >with a local choral society and lead the music at my synagogue, so I do
have
> >an inkling of what creative work is about.
>
> That's as may be.  Nonetheless: you do not have to and are not in the
process
> of making your living as a writer (or singer or artist).
>
> In other words...and don't take this the wrong way, but it's the
fact...you've
> been to the zoo, but you've never had to be the monkey in the cage.  Your
> understanding and empathy for the situation is delineated by which side of
the
> cage you're standing on.
>

With all due respect, Joe, your reply to Lyle is both profoundly arrogant
and *wrong*.

To suggest that someone who holds a "day job" to survive (like probably 90%
of all the artists, actors and writers in the world) while pursuing their
creative endeavor in the precious hours outside of 9-5, is somehow less of
an artist than someone who has been fortunate enough to turn their art into
a paying profession (with, I might point out, the concomitant compromises
that come along with commercial success) is both fallacious and
condescending.  Indeed, if we're going to talk philsophically about Art, the
only True Artist would be the one who creates without any hope or intent of
financial renumeration; as soon as money and clients enter the picture (so
to speak), the artist is inevitably forced to alter her original vision.
And while I agree with your often repeated premise that a genuine Artist
feels a compulsion to create (tho' of course, that seems to leave no room
for persons such as myself who suffer through prolonged creative blocks or
who, also like myself, suddenly find themselves unable to paint, etc.
because of a sudden physical handicap), by no means does that correlate with
"having to make a living as an artist."  Having to create and having to make
money may well be two things the Artist must do, but it hardly means the
only "legitimate" answer is to do the one through the other.  By your
standards, we'd have to exclude the bulk of the world's great writers and
artists from your monkey cage because their bad luck, lack of connections,
personality, inability to deal with their art as a business, or the
revolutionary nature of their works kept them from supporting themselves
solely through their artistic work.  Your life has one set of circumstances,
Lyle's another.  The fact that you are getting paid to write scripts and
comic books and he's not doesn't make you any more an artist -- or more
entitled to express -- and be respected in his expression -- of his opinion
about the legalities surrounding art in the capitalist system.

LMA




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From: jmsatb5 at aol.com (Jms at B5)
Date: Thu, 3 Jul 2003 06:10:30 +0000 (UTC)
Lines: 55

>> In other words...and don't take this the wrong way, but it's the
>fact...you've
>> been to the zoo, but you've never had to be the monkey in the cage.  Your
>> understanding and empathy for the situation is delineated by which side of
>the
>> cage you're standing on.
>>
>
>With all due respect, Joe, your reply to Lyle is both profoundly arrogant
>and *wrong*.
>
>To suggest that someone who holds a "day job" to survive (like probably 90%
>of all the artists, actors and writers in the world) while pursuing their
>creative endeavor in the precious hours outside of 9-5, is somehow less of
>an artist than someone who has been fortunate enough to turn their art into
>a paying profession (with, I might point out, the concomitant compromises
>that come along with commercial success) is both fallacious and
>condescending.  

Yes, it would be, if that was what I had said.  Or even what I had suggested.

Let me read that over again...hmm..."less of an artist"...wait, let me scroll
back a second, and go back to the original message, because I'd hate to be
wrong about something as monumental as this, and check again...hmmmm.....nope,
nope, it ain't there.

This is what's called "reading something that wasn't ever said or implied into
what someone else said."

My point, which everybody else here seems to have gotten but you, is that a
person who does something as a hobby, has a different perspective on that
practice than someone who makes a living at it.  Are you saying this is not so?
 I don't think you'd find anyone north of Papua, New Guinea who would go along
with that premise.

So: no, I didn't say it, didn't imply it, didn't suggest it.  And pretty much
all the other replies I've seen here tend to bolster the sense that you're the
*only* person who came up with this one.  Because you have a tendency to do
that, and to try and hammer me with stuff, usually unprovoked.

I hope that you will be as enthusiastic in your retraction of your accusation
as you were in the making of it.  

It would certainly be a refreshing change of pace.

 jms

(jmsatb5 at aol.com)
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