#30. Bohemian Hustle.

PART 1. A One-woman Attempt to Subvert Late-stage Capitalism by Supporting The Arts and Small Businesses - Including Her Own.

Dearest Readers,
I hope in the next few posts to explain my long absences from Wit’s End, to absolve myself, and to be entertaining while doing so. As I add this to the steaming pile on the internet we call ‘content’, I am very grateful for your attention, and am aware you are paying for it with your life. I hope you find that it was worth it!
With love,
~ TS.

For a peek into my very own small business, see *taradesigns

We artists would like to be free of the tawdry world of commerce. We want to lie about on a richly embroidered ottoman smoking a hookah pipe while discussing Oscar Wilde. We want to be free. We want to get loaded. We don’t see ourselves evaluating a market strategy and spending an away-day in an airless office doing SWOT analysis, and still less carrying out performance reviews, firing staff and producing mission statements… Well yes, it would be nice to be free of vulgar trade. But most of us need to earn some sort of income.

~ Tom Hodgkinson, Business for Bohemians, 2016.

There are legions of us. We held our breaths waiting for the Ikigai that never came. But now, we have understood that just by being born in the late 20th Century and not into poverty - all the perfumes of Arabia cannot sweeten our little hands!

In late-stage capitalism, we are all Lady Macbeth. Moving on.

So we have a plan B.

B for Business. An SOB, if you will. A Small Obscure Business. The kind that allows you to make beautiful, useful things and sell them while maintaining your freedom and humanity. C'est possible! Who knew?

Apparently, a lot of people.

Too much capitalism doesn’t mean too many capitalists, but too few capitalists.

~ G.K. Chesterton, The Superstition of Divorce, 1920 (Disclaimer: Can’t say I know if G.K. meant what I think he meant by that - but he should have!)

Not participating in The Wicked World to pre-absolve oneself of Guilt doesn’t work. It doesn’t work for two reasons.

1. Because if we have any means at all, we support Big Oil (etc) with every breath we take, every move we make, every cake we bake, and
2. Eventually we will find ourselves floating facedown in the rivers of ennui that spring from our hearts from when we stab ourselves with a fork at the bougie boulangerie for eating the muffin made not only of unfree-range eggs but of several non-local and inorganic thingy-things as well.

Oh, the horror, the horror! All the perfumes of Arabia cannot sweeten our little hands!

Fellow Fallen Angels: In this modern world there is no sunny side up if you hold dear values other than market ones and it would be best to surrender to this reality for two reasons:

1. “Guilt” (as someone in a Woody Allen movie once said), “is petty-bourgeois crap”, and
2. “There may be more beautiful times, but this one is ours” (Jean-Paul Sartre)

---

You ask me why I spend my life writing?
Do I find entertainment?
Is it worthwhile?
Above all, does it pay?
If not, then, is there a reason?...
I write only because there is a voice within me. That will not be still.

~ Sylvia Plath, Letters Home: Correspondence, 1950-1963.

In February 2023, I decided to give Substack a spin. My motive was simple - to get back in earnest to what I love best - writing. Substack would be a place to sharpen my claws, lick my paws, spit out furballs, scratch an itch. I had wanted to publish 52 pieces - about one a week - and in a year to have made a decision about “what to do” with the voice in my head that will not be still.

Well, that didn’t happen.

I figured that if my work had no takers, I would take that relentless tendency down to the river and drown it in a bag like so many adorable puppies. If it did have takers, the cat would be out of the bag and it would tell me what to do and when. “For the price of a coffee”, the good people on Substack insisted, readers would pay for the pleasure.

But nope. I wasn’t able to churn it out weekly nor get anyone (other than first-degree relatives) to pay for the pleasure of reading it! At first, I thought maybe it was because I was not good enough. At writing or at hustling. But self-doubt is so late-stage Capitalism, and I identify (oftentimes) as more Medieval myself.

Besides, the voice won’t be still.

In short: I have decided to stay on Substack but to remove all paywalls. Art is gift! We can do what we like with it. Sublet it or let someone live in it for free. No one can stop us. Not even The Overlords. Who knew?

Apparently, a lot of people.

You can read Bohemian Hustle Part 2: Mutiny on The Bounty, here!

Never play to the gallery… I think it's terribly dangerous for an artist to fulfill other people's expectations. I think they generally produce their worst work when they do that.

~ David Bowie, Circa 1997 (I think), in a TV interview.

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