It's about to get personal
really, REALLY personal......
I can admit it- marketing is not a skill I possess.
No- it’s worse than that.
If it’s possible to have less than nothing of something, I have that- with marketing.
When forced to fill out a description or bio for ‘who I am’ and ‘what I do’ in an effort to convince anyone else why they should care about ‘who I am’ and ‘what I do’ I literally start squirming in my seat like a child trying to get out of doing anything that isn’t fun or eating anything that doesn’t taste like candy.
As a non-child adult woman of nearly 50, I figure it’s about time I give myself some loving support by making it easier to invite your loving support in.
Which leads me closer to the point of this post I am typing to you at exactly 1:01 on a Wednesday from somewhere in a room in a realm where following one’s bliss requires more than just a good sense of direction.
I will never forget watching Amadeus for the first time as a teen and marvelling at the degree of poverty afflicting the lives of Mozart and his adoring decollete-studded Stanzy- MOZART for goodness sake.
How was it possible that a man of such unearthly talent was practically starving while existing in such ill financial health? In what crazy universe was a man of his genius not thriving? Not heated by multiple fires in multiple fireplaces that kept his hands warm long enough for him to whisk a feather quill across the page as if it were a magic wand he wielded?
Whether the film’s portrayal of Mozart was historically accurate or purely fictitious, it still struck me and stuck with me. An oddly puzzling thing, as if some important law of nature was being twisted and inverted.
In a world where music is so widely appreciated and celebrated, how is it that those very ones who write it, compose it, sing it can barely afford to devote their full time to making it?
And then I grew up.
I learned that you can indeed make a living as a musician/song-writer.
IF you play the game and forfeit creative freedom for fame. (yes, I realize I’m generalizing.)
Due to my particularly stubborn nature and chronic addiction to sovereignty this was simply never an option for me.
I don’t want fame, I don’t even want a fortune. I simply want to wake up and create, and earn enough to keep that bliss-ball rolling….for as long as I shall live.
With that said, I’m fast approaching the part where I present to you the reason of this post. The ‘really personal’ part.
But first, for clarity:
I’m so not comparing myself to Mozart- MOZART for goodness sake.
I’m also not claiming to be a ‘victim of the system’. That is so not my style. Mainstream gonna mainstream. Matrix gonna matrix.
It would be too easy if it was too easy. I love the hustle and challenge of the worldly game afoot. Knowing who you are is half the battle- BEING who you are without giving in or up is the other half. I think I found a way….
I now have a Patreon page.
I’d like to think of it more as a new online home for my music.
Or more poetically….a patronage portal through which you can, for as little as $5 a month, support my devotion to the preservation of beauty and of art that resonates deeply within human hearts and souls.
You will gain ‘behind the screen’ access to my world via photos, recordings, videos of me in all stages of my creative process, the gritty & the pretty, as well as hosting regular streams LIVE from The Nest so you can join me as I write, compose, and perform, with special monthly Q&A hangs for Patrons. There are two tiers of membership offering you access something or everything. You can choose to join for free to see if The Nest is a place you want to hang out and if my art-making is something you’d like to support.
As I write to you, my lovely Substack subscribers, my excitement about the next-level amount of sharing I’ll be doing is growing….so much so that I’m going to stop writing, click ‘publish’, and head on up to The Nest, aka my studio to start cookin.
Let’s get this party started!!
With love,
Jacqueline
PS. Here is a song I wrote called Be That Light for a taster. I dedicate it to all of you who are holding the ground for love, for sanity, for silliness, for humanity.
“I will be that light for you, baby, and you can be that light for me”
Rock on! Ride the waves, surf the tides , free, free to reign. Lightning, shows the way.
My emerging theory as a newer artist coming from the business world has to do with the difference between art and artifacts.
Pretty much any idea coming from human imagination can be a form of art but if and when we want to turn it into a business, we have to create and apply a bunch of artifacts that serve to manage and control the art.
Art is too willy and unpredictable to become a business. I do we could and should try to keep art as close to the art and be able to make a living from that.
Thus, I feel marketing is more artifact than art. Marketing exists to harness what the art is in order to turn the art into sales. Even worse, marketing has become such an outdated artifact that it often now has to resort to making claims that are far beyond what the thing being sold actually achieves.
As artists, we would naturally not be very good at or feel very good about doing something that takes us away from our art.