Capitalism and the shadow artist.

Shalom Mwenesi via Unsplash

Shadow artist.


It's Julia Cameron's concept of the buried creative urge which turns us into people who (in Jaine Toth's words), "don’t think of themselves as creative, yet surround themselves with art and other artists-they are drawn to the creativity in them."


It's the aspiring singer who starts managing singers, the painter who buys and sells art instead of painting, etc etc etc.


It's a way of getting up close to the things we are too afraid to have, and feel silly for wanting because the arts/artists aren't valued under capitalism in the U.S. (and wherever else its political might touches the globe).


Julia Cameron wrote The Artist's Way as a workbook to help recover the creative flow that is our birthright as humans.


The book itself stays away from any social analysis, but it reads to me like a manual for quieting the internalized standards of capitalism.





Via Rubén Bagüés

Capitalism values profit over everything, and places us all in a hierarchy based on race, gender, ability, sexual orientation, etc. in a way that stifles our most basic belief in ourselves and stops us from doing so many things - depending upon where we land in the hierarchy.


The lower the rank, the less social capital we have. The lower the social capital, the higher the stakes for pursuing creative interests that take up time we otherwise have to spend on maintaining bare survival. And at the same time, it's the undeterred creativity in marginalized people that has made it possible for us to survive on so little. Life itself is a creative pursuit when your social environment constantly negates you.


And yet. There are full-time artists from marginalized backgrounds. And then, there are the shadow artists who hang around those artists.
Me.
I've been that.


I started dating and then married a musician. For a while, I shamelessly wanted to be his patron and live vicariously through him. After building a ton of frustration and resentment, being introduced by a friend to The Artist's Way and a lot of hardheadedness, I did make plans of my own.


Returning to school was part of the plan for living more authentically and pursuing things that seem impossible. Being out of school and facing a sh*tty job market + the various costs of living has brought me the fear of putting myself out there. Living authentically, being my creative self without worrying about selling anything...it feels like a luxury I can't afford a lot of the time.


ev via Unsplash

But I'm going to keep trying, in a thousand tiny "manageable" ways if that's what it takes. No more shadow life.