the sex & cash theory

Perhaps… but my expe­rience tells me that kic­king into “Des­pe­ra­tion Mode” is unsus­tai­na­ble long-term.
Sure, you can do it for a few intense months, maybe a year or two, while you’re still young and rela­ti­vely imper­vious to pain.
But it gets old fast. And so, sadly, do you.

I’ve long thought of this as the “Vin­cent and Theo” Theo-ry. Vin­cent Van Gogh would’ve been nothing but a fai­led preacher and mis­sio­nary who’d dab­bled in the arts briefly without his brother Theo, who lived the straight “money” life and sub­si­di­zed Vin­cent with it, in addi­tion to pro­mo­ting Vincent’s work. They loved each other, they nee­ded each other, they com­pri­sed a syner­gis­tic powerhouse.
The fact that Theo con­ve­niently hap­pe­ned to be an art dea­ler begs a further ques­tion, though: how many crea­tive folks work hard at the money/Theo gig in order to have wee­kend time for sex/Vincent…and then com­ple­tely lack the time and energy to also be their own promoter/manager/publicist? You have to put food on the table and a roof over your head and gui­tar strings/brushes/dance shoes/whatever in your hands, you have to main­tain your vision and crea­ti­vity (Dorothea Brande had some good tips on how to be both a crea­tive wri­ter and a ruth­less edi­tor of one’s own work), AND on some level you also have to be promoter/manager/publicist, which requi­res a Cash men­ta­lity toward the Sex pro­duct, not to men­tion a Sex enthu­siasm for the Cash self-marketing. And, if you have a few spare minu­tes left over, try to be a human being, with res­pon­si­ble links to your com­mu­nity, maybe even a family.
The­sis: the World we must inha­bit, the Is. Antithe­sis: Art, which explo­res pos­si­bi­li­ties, the Could Be But Ain’t. Synthe­sis: Expression/Manifestation, which con­veys What Ain’t into What Is and rede­fi­nes both. And still the trash needs to be taken out and don’t for­get your stepdad’s birth­day and when are you gonna get married?

um.…as a “crea­tive geek” please tell me that at least one of these was sup­po­sed to say “Sex”?
“Or geeks. You spend you week­days wri­ting code for a face­less cor­po­ra­tion (“Cash”), then you spend your eve­ning and wee­kends wri­ting anarchic, weird com­pu­ter games to amuse your techie friends with (“Cash”).“
Seriously — great article that has been for­war­ded to our team.

Des­pe­ra­tion Mode isn’t inten­ded to be a long-term solu­tion, of course. Des­pe­ra­tion Mode is simply the bridge bet­ween a Sta­ble Life Fun­ded By Cash and a Sta­ble Life Fun­ded By Sex. It’s the fuel for a long-term fire.
The Vin­cent and Theo dis­cus­sion brings up a good point: time. If you can do what you’d like to do while still being pro­duc­tive at your day job, well fancy that. But if you find that something exci­tes you MORE than your day job, to the point that your day job has become an eight hour chunk of your day that’s sepa­ra­ting you from what you REALLY want to do, the time has come to find a way to make what you REALLY want to do into something that also pays the bills.

Unfor­tu­na­tely for geeks, the face­less cor­po­ra­tion will have made you sign a form saying they own any anarchic, weird com­pu­ter games, or other com­pu­ter rela­ted crea­tive out­put you may come up with.

Henry Miller is another good exam­ple. He had a lot of sex with women from whom he mooched cash and then wrote about it. Wait a sec…

Reminds me of the “Hac­kers and Pain­ters” essay.
http://www.paulgraham.com/hp.html
The dif­fe­rence bet­ween ave­rage com­pu­ter pro­gram­mers and the genius hac­ker types, like the ones that create their own Seg­ways out of spare parts just to see if they can, is that hac­kers have their day jobs pro­gram­ming for The Man and keep pro­gram­ming at night too, but this time for them­sel­ves and for the love of the game.

OK…i think i’ve got­ten it down. I quit my job 3 weeks ago to become a hoo­ker. What’s next once I have this sex for cash thing licked?

Hey! This reminds me of hobby(sex) and work (cash).
Great article!!

Love it. This sce­na­rio is often made further neces­sary because doing what we love (the sex) from the well of our souls/creativity/convictions may never ever be something the mar­ket demands, or will even tole­rate. The pain­ter may be ahead of his time (sure, his stuff’ll be worth something one day — when he’s dead), the comic may say things that are unsett­ling, the dan­cer may want to dance about ugly things ins­tead of beauty. And herein lies the pro­blem. So I think doing the work to fund the time/supplies/angst nee­ded to do the crea­tive stuff will always be the means of sur­vi­ving as a crea­tive. Of course, if anyone out there wants to be a patron to a Cana­dian come­dian, ignore all this and send me a che­que.
Great article — please keep it archi­ved, I would love to refe­rence it in the future. Thanks a bunch!

Great article. All your points are well-taken, but Mar­tin Amis is a par­ti­cu­larly unfor­tu­nate exam­plar. He famously recei­ved a then record advance of $1.1million for ‘The Infor­ma­tion’ (in 1995). A good deal of this was spent ins­ta­lling a new set of teeth in his sham­bles of a mouth. I doubt his advan­ces have gone down subs­tan­tially since then.

AFAIK, Vin­cent Van Gogh only ever sold two pain­tings in his lifetime.

i don’t have any smartsey-fartsey com­ments about the wri­ting.
I just like the car­toon.
a lot.

What fas­ci­na­tes me is the appa­rent uni­ver­sa­lity of your obser­va­tion. I’m about the 10 zillionth per­son to write in and say “yes! that’s me! I’m sec­retly a (pop star/writer/inventor/anything gla­mo­rous) and the day job is just a front. There’s a para­llel debate to be had about free­dom and the ways in which our post-capitalist society crea­tes serf­dom without any obvious monarchs in the picture.

what about the per­son who sells thier body for sex (CASH) but thier real pas­sion, and thier out­let for crea­ti­vity is the artis­tic coun­ter­fit­ting of bank­no­tes (SEX)?

Nice set of posts.
The “Sex and cash” theory is also (sort of) ban­died around as the “per­cen­tage ten­nis” theory: not every shot can be a winner.

hmm, yes, you’re right about the ‘sex & cash theory” but thank god for free­lance, at least — the best of both worlds. i couldn’t live with myself otherwise.

I thought I was utterly alone in my strug­gles and then I find your thoughts Hugh. I work as a jani­tor for the government(cash) and I’m a sin­gle dad of a 13 year old boy. I write and draw my own comic book. I have no illu­sions about making money or gai­ning noto­riety for my work. My reward is the work itself. When I published my first comic it was my reward for sta­ying on the path. I’ve met many peo­ple who were far more talen­ted than me but none of them per­se­ve­red. There are always excu­ses for not wri­ting and/or dra­wing but time is like money, once you waste it ain’t coming back. None of us has limit­less time to waste or as Henry Rollins put it ” You could spend your entire life in the nowhere land of self doubt”. Been there done that and got the T-shirt too. Be a self star­ter and be pre­pa­red to fail and accept that there will always be doub­ters and nay sayers. Remem­ber that the race isn’t given to the stron­gest but to he that endu­res. Keep striving.

rather than a sex/cash balance, or a des­pe­ra­tion theory, why not the lucky bum theory?
in a nutshell: do what you wanna, and if you wanna share it and be famous, well.. do it, I guess. and if you wanna be a lazy drea­mer who never wants to have to work someone else’s time?
pros: no cares, smoke pot all day and socia­lize, learn things, and do wha­te­ver you dream of on the side. essen­tially lurk in your favo­rite cell with dreams of good for­tune. Also, you help your local unem­ploy­ment rates by pro­vi­ding others with your mis­sed oppor­tu­ni­ties.
cons: no fixed income, sac­ri­fi­cing some desi­res, having to fit in with a society that ‘can’t take you anywhere’ because you never have any cash.
it is a rough start, espe­cially if you are com­ple­tely inde­pen­dant. but I’m still here.

Where does Van Gogh fit into this?

Van Gough?
Sex: Making pain­tings.
Cash: Get­ting his brother Theo to send him money.
Rock on.

I totally buy this theory, thanks for put­ting the article up!
I have a part-time job with decent pay and full­time bene­fits. As a result I work with a lot of won­der­ful crea­tive peo­ple — wri­ters, pain­ters, dan­cers and musi­cians. They are almost across-the-board more inte­res­ting than the full­time arts peo­ple I know, because they do what they love because they love it, not to get a grant or a line on the cv, and they’re never re-doing old stuff long after it’s lost its spark because their fan­base loves it.

Spi­ri­tually, I believe the idea of the sepa­ra­tion of anything from anything else is bullshit. If one is willing to clear the mind of con­ven­tion and lis­ten to the inner voice, step by step, mira­cu­luously, one will find that the only thing that actually works in life, brin­ging bliss with it, is a seam­less repre­sen­ta­tion of the whole that each person’s essence actually is. “The deci­sive moment” beco­mes the one in which, finally, one is una­ble any lon­ger to choose against itself and its who­le­ness. This is not to sug­gest an appea­rance of peaches ‘n cream coo­kies will accom­pany one down the hard trail of reaching this point of Truth, Light, Love.

This article has sum­med up a lot of where I’ve been in the past. I’m in the really lucky posi­tion of going into a “Cash” sce­na­rio and fin­ding “Sex”.
I’ve explai­ned all this to my wife, quo­ted this essay, and my wife has thumn­ped me.
I shall never use the phrase ‘You see love, I’m happy because I’m get­ting sex in the office’ again.

I think you are ama­zingly sexy and loa­ded!
I am com­ple­tely tur­ned on by your site!
I feel overwhel­med by your insights and your thought pro­cess’…
wow!
i want to gob­ble you up!
HAHA!
lATER– L

nice article, inte­res­ting thoughts…

Well.…I just did the big ole diva drama queen thang last week… and all I know is it felt fan­tas­tic!
High payin, crea­tive direc­tor role.…gone.
Scary brink of nothing­ness ahead…
The rea­son your theory didnt work for me is that the day job was 10 hours a day and I was so deple­ted I couldn’t
find a crea­tive bone left in my body for the eve­nings or the wee­kends when i just nee­ded R&R.
The day job neednt be 50 hours a week right?
Any­ways LOVE your work and really enjo­yed your theory!
Diana

A very inte­res­ting theory, and one I can’t say I disa­gree with in prin­ci­ple. When I faced the deci­sion to become a full-time illus­tra­tor, I went whole-hog. I was such an ego­ma­nia­cal jerk that I really thought I could just sit and draw all day (re: have Sex) and peo­ple would throw Cash at me. It took 13 years, but it finally hap­pe­ned. I do wish I’d heard of this theory earlier… — mh

Van­selu, thanks for the input.
A. I make no claim to be revo­lu­tio­nary. It’s meant to be com­mon sense, based on my own and others’ per­so­nal expe­rience.
B. It’s not just about “Hobby & Job”. It applies to pro­fes­sio­nal crea­ti­ves and artists as well. I sup­pose what’s inte­res­ting to me is how the pro’s are as affec­ted by it as any amateur.

I love my job. It gives me cash AND sex. Some­ti­mes the sex even gets me cash. Beat that.

“You will need clothes, food, and a place to live. Do what it takes to get those things first. With the time left over, do wha­te­ver you want.“
That is NOWHERE NEAR what I’m saying, Cosine.
Please re-read and get back to me

I like to be inte­res­ting, i like fuck and dife­rent things, i love games and you touch my body…come in knowme…

Reminds me of the “Hac­kers and Pain­ters” essay.

Inte­res­ting refi­ne­ment, and much more rea­lis­tic, than the “Do what you love, the money will follow” theory. I had always put just the mini­mum amount of effort I could get away with in the day job (“Cash” thing) just hard enough so I could devote as much time and energy as pos­si­ble in being an elec­tro­nic musi­cian (“Sex” thing), thin­king that soo­ner or later the music would ‘pay off’ (become the “Cash” thing) and I’d live hap­pily ever after. It never wor­ked out that way (and, I might add, there were times when I com­pro­mi­sed myself in doing the music thing with others that no only did it not pay the bills but it wasn’t all that fun, a dou­ble whammy in that regard), so I gave up the music so I could shore up the bill paying part of my life.
Now, even though I don’t have as much time as I’d like for the music thing, I get more out of it because (a) the tools have evol­ved so much that I can make really great soun­ding music, and more of it in less time; and (b) I only do it for my enjoy­ment, not out of some mis­pla­ced hope that it will ever pay the bills.
Your XXX vs $$$ theory (and in fact the entire How To Be Crea­tive series) have hel­ped me rea­lize how lucky I am to be able to do what I’m doing the way that I’m doing it. Thanks for that.
SUBVERT THE DOMINANT PARADIGM!

i want to be a porn star

This is all very well and good untill you
“reach the stage of no return“
Lets say, you follo­wed some of your fan­tas­tic theo­ries and deci­ded to branch out of your nor­mal realm, of say mecha­nic, and spend four years at uni­ver­sity stud­ying graphic design,
So to sup­port your­self during those 4 years you work bet­ween stud­ying hoping that when you finshed you could con­cen­trate soley on your sexy job.
Somewhere near the end of your stu­dies, the plane crashed, it became IMPOSSIBLE to keep fixing cars while desig­ning , (dirty hands and clean print outs dont mix)
I reached the “POINT OF NO RETURN“
I reached a point where i rea­li­sed that the “cash job didnt weigh up, and that it was cau­sing more harm to my crea­ti­vity than good, it was des­tro­ying my will to live, and i advise young artists not to ignore this fee­ling and quit…before your entire soul is suc­ked clean…
and you become a for­mer shell of a per­son…
Most of your exam­ples, had a pretty cool cash jobs, how many had to crawl under a car during pou­ring rain and replace someo­nes star­ter­mo­tor.
Or clean out filthy toi­lets, etc.
So i want to point out to artists, that if your smart, and cle­ver you can craft your life to live without out nee­ding a cash job, but you have to be willing to give away many things, (like any self res­pec­ting part­ner)
This point of no return is i think a healthy excer­cice for all artists, i know one george orwell, most cer­tainly reached the point of no return many times, (see keep the aspis­tria flying)
or sar­tre (nau­sea) or even step­pen­wolf
most of the cha­racthers of these novels where doing diddly squat.…and had pro­found rea­li­sa­tions and exis­ten­tial dele­mias…
so … you decide…

Well, Nathan Dorn­brook, that was really a great post. Not at all mediocre. Wow.

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