“The artist appeals to that part of our being which is a gift, and not an acquisition, and therefore more permanently enduring.”
– Joseph Conrad.
There’s a book from the 1980s that has managed to achieve a large cult following over the years among artists, poets, musicians and other creative types by Lewis Hyde, titled The Gift.
The book’s big talking point is that “Art is in conflict with its own value.”
In other words, art is ideally a gift the artist is giving to the world (or else it’s mere “acquisition”), yet the artist still needs to eat, pay rent, and wants to be successful, the same as everyone else.
The book spends several hundred pages discussing the complex ins and outs of this aforementioned paradox.
Trying to create value vs trying to extract value. The gift economy vs the market economy. To us, this is not just the artist’s predicament, this is the human condition. Anyone who works for a living- the entrepreneur especially- faces the same struggle.
Because this is what humans have always done for countless millennia. Trying to walk the razor’s edge between our inner life and the real world, the spiritual and the material, without being crushed.
There’s a word for people who are really good at doing it: Leaders.
There’s also a word for how it’s done at scale: Culture.
Yes, it’s great to build something of lasting value and hopefully have a successful career while doing it, but as it’s inferred by Lewis Hyde’s book, it’s the artist’s job to remind us that there’s also something far more deep and meaningful going on.
Hopefully we’ll all be ready when the time comes.
