Archive for the ‘The Sex and Cash Theory’ Category

October 17, 2012

“The Tense Duality” that governs every creative career

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[Exhi­bit A: My more per­so­nal side]

[Exhi­bit B: the gaping­void mission]

One of the bet­ter things I ever wrote was The Sex And Cash Theory, something to explain how to rea­lis­ti­cally balance the need to pay the bills with the need to do something crea­tive with your life. It ended up being a key idea in Ignore Every­body.

“The crea­tive per­son basi­cally has two kinds of jobs: One is the sexy, crea­tive kind. Second is the kind that pays the bills. Some­ti­mes the assign­ment covers both bases, but not often.”

“This tense dua­lity (bet­ween these two extre­mes) will never be trans­cen­ded.” Even if I know that to be true (Hell, I pretty much wrote an entire book on it),  most days I still strug­gle with it.

But we all do, artist or non-artist, crea­tive or non-creative. “This tense dua­lity” is what one of mankind’s great books,  The Bha­ga­vad Gita is also really all about: Poor ol’ Arjuna would like nothing bet­ter than a quiet life of spi­ri­tual con­tem­pla­tion, but his duties as an up-and-coming  war­lord keep get­ting the way.  So Hea­venly Lord Krisna comes down from On High and tells Arjuna, well, get used to it, Kiddo. This tense dua­lity is in the DNA of Crea­tion. Hence the Dharma, hence Karma. By the end of the book, Arjuna “gets” it. Happy Ending.

My per­so­nal “tense dua­lity” is a lot less tense than it used to be, Thank God. It used to be “silly adver­ti­sing day job by day, dra­wing silly car­toons on the backs of busi­ness cards for fun by night”. Now the dua­lity is more, my wee “busi­ness card dood­les” on the per­so­nal side (See photo above), the exter­nal side is the “Trans­form Office Art” mis­sion (See video above) that gaping­void is on.

And I’ve grown to trea­sure the dua­lity. Every time I’ve  tried to per­ma­nently wear just one hat,  the per­so­nal hat or the busi­ness hat, I get bored silly within a week. The work seems to need the cons­tant dia­lo­gue bet­ween the inner and outer.

But like I said, I think we all have that. Fin­ding that sweet spot where that never-ending dia­lo­gue can exist hap­pily fore­ver, is one of THE great tasks (and gifts) our brief life gives us.

I hope you’ve found yours.

 

March 25, 2004

the sex & cash theory

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image9869.jpg
(Early biz­card dra­wing. Lami­na­ted. New York, August ’98)
The Sex & Cash Theory: From“How To Be Crea­tive”:
The crea­tive per­son basi­cally has two kinds of jobs: One is the sexy, crea­tive kind. Second is the kind that pays the bills. Some­ti­mes the assign­ment covers both bases, but not often.
A good exam­ple is Phil, a NY pho­to­grapher friend of mine. He does really wild stuff for the indie maga­zi­nes– it pays nothing, but it allows him to build his port­fo­lio. Then he’ll go off and shoot some cata­lo­gues for a while. Nothing too exci­ting, but it pays the bills.
Another exam­ple is some­body like Mar­tin Amis. He wri­tes “serious” novels, but he has to sup­ple­ment his income by wri­ting the occa­sio­nal news­pa­per article for the Lon­don papers (novel royal­ties are bloody pathe­tic– even bes­tse­llers like Amis aren’t immune).
Or actors. One year Tra­volta will be in an ultra-hip flick like Pulp Fic­tion (“Sex”), the next he’ll be in some dumb spy thri­ller (“Cash”).
It’s balan­cing the need to make a good living while still main­tai­ning one’s cre­di­bi­lity. My M.O. is gaping­void (“Sex”), cou­pled with wri­ting adver­ti­sing (“Cash”).
I’m thin­king about the young wri­ter who has to wait tables to pay the bills, in spite of her wri­ting appea­ring in all the cool lite­rary maga­zi­nes.… who dreams of one day of not having her life divi­ded so harshly.
Well, over time the “harshly” bit might go away, but not the “divi­ded”. As soon as you accept this, for some rea­son your career starts moving ahead fas­ter. I don’t know why this hap­pens. It’s the peo­ple who refuse to cleave their lives this way– who just want to start Day One by quit­ting their current crappy job and moving straight on over to best-selling author. Well, they never make it.
Any­way, it’s called “The Sex & Cash Theory”. Keep it under your pillow.