‘You are a creative? How much money do you make?’

If I have a God it is Bacchus & he has branded me.

I always find it fascinating how when dealing with strangers, family and friends who upon hearing you are an artiste/actor/musician ask the most personal questions about your finances. Would I ask a bank manager or a Waitrose aisle stacker about their weekly earnings?
NO!

I  was unfortunately dragged to a proper English’s girls school so whilst I always want to be honest with them and ask ‘What business is that of yours!’ I tend to mumble some half baked answer about being creative and constantly fighting forward. I often come up with the hardly ideal response ‘It is the same as being a freelancer, one never knows what is ahead but you keep working forward.’

Of course these poor unwitting people (who never know how near they come to me being truthful and going ‘God that is so incredibly rude of you to ask me, what do you make an hour?’  ideally as a response to the next yummy mummy who hasn’t worked a day since she got married and worries only about her hairdresser leaving town), well their rudeness is all borne on that dangerous legend of an artist’s tragic life. The one that states all creatives are mad, live in poverty, will drink absinthe and take opium as soon as they can find it, who have passionate doomed affairs with many partners indiscriminately, who will go into flights of fantasy about their new projects and ordinary mortals may get hurt in their creative pursuit of making art.

I am not saying some of these myths aren’t true, yes creatives do chose to walk on the wild side. They do believe dangerously that art and beauty is of more value than yet another Range Rover. That if they have a god they identify with it is Bacchus, god of sex, drink, orgies and creativity, of ritual madness and ecstasy. He is the god of epiphany, of the grape harvest, the symbol of those who live an unconventional life, who are prepared to be satyrs and maenads in their pursuit of chaos, danger,  frenzy and joy. He is with you on a dance floor or at a festival singing with thousands of others and there at the theatre as the actors release their emotions to the full so even the West End’s often silent  audience cannot help but scream or cry inside.

He is also called Eleutherios (“the liberator”), whose wine, music and ecstatic dance frees his followers from self-conscious fear and care, and subverts the oppressive restraints of the powerful. Those who partake of his mysteries are possessed and empowered by the god himself. The first plays in Greece were performed in his honor, thus he is also the god of theatre.
1520-23 Titian ‘Bacchus and Ariadne’,

In The Birth of Tragedy (1872), the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche contrasted Dionysus with the god Apollo as a symbol of the fundamental, unrestrained aesthetic principle of force, music, and intoxication versus the principle of form, beauty, and sight represented by the latter. (wiki)

So really why I do  worry about what the neighbors say? We are creatives, we have a greater lineage than to stack shelves, though if we do that to pay the bills whilst working on our art that is perfectly acceptable. Every waiter and waitress in every coffee shop or restaurant in Los Angeles is beyond gorgeous and fit; they are all actors waiting for their break. I can understand that, it is better to make their money at an easy job than waste their precious life force on building businesses that they don’t want to build. I have been distracted or maybe the correct phrase is ‘sold myself’ back to big business a few times as I carve my career as a creative. And every time as the bank balance goes up so my creativity goes down and the joy winks out of my life, I always put my full on energy to what is in front of me and I waste my creative life.

Of course I have chosen not to have a family so far, which does allow me more freedom. If I had a huge mortgage and kids, well of course I would need to make other decisions. Though if you are there, then maybe think about living in a smaller house and more frugally so you can save to thus take time off when you need, or have one day off a week to work on your ‘art.’ There is no shame in an old car or a tiny flat, indeed to downshift to follow one’s muse is the most wonderful gift you can ever give yourself and in the long run your family. In the short term they probably won’t get it!

If you are happy to make your art on odd nights and Saturday afternoons then you are very lucky that Bacchus has just touched you lightly. I feel branded, I need to create or I feel like I am dead. So really the ebook I am just finishing writing comes from me having fought with my own creativity, my own ego, my insecurities, my attempts to run away from  art and live a ‘normal’ life. Problem always arise when creatives live a normal life and have no place for their creativity to come out; that is when they put the drama into relationships, they get depressed, they party too much and get addictions. I have seen it time and time again. They become broken records of ‘I have this idea’, ‘I want to write this’ as they drink another bottle of Chardonnay.

Far better to tip your hat to Bacchus and worship him by doing your work, be it daily writing, singing or theatre making.

Five Ways to get your project done as a creative details here
How to blast through creative blocks and get your project done from the initial spark of an idea to getting your projects finished & out there!

FREE Online Workshop
1pm GMT  London time Thursday 12th December 2013

Do you have a novel half finished or just never started?
Any album of songs about your ex that you would love to write, record and sell?
A series of paintings that you would love to do and show at a gallery?

If you answered yes then I have created this free workshop for creatives; whether you are a writer, an actor, a film maker or a fine artist. I cover five proven strategies to get those creative muscles working and in creating and finishing YOUR ART.

Excerpt from my forthcoming ebook.