Ben asked for a cover design for his new zine, then for an ad for my own things to be placed inside. I put something together without a second thought. That’s strange because I come from a time when artistic integrity was put in opposition to commerce. Getting called a sell-out carried some meaning and consequence. It’s laughable to look back on now, when every scrap, actual or virtual, is up for sale to the lowest bidder.

I’m reading a book about Margaret Anderson, founder of The Little Review, which started in Chicago and is best known as the first publisher of Joyce’s Ulysses. The lengths and depths to which she and her colleagues had to scramble for funds to keep the lights on is equal parts familiar and depressing. Has there ever been a time or place where artist were valued and just allowed to do their thing in peace? Does the practical difficulty of getting the work done necessarily give it value?

Every creative person I’ve ever known or heard of serves at the pleasure and whim of some master or other. Either they have independent means or they bend their craft to a patron’s will. I tend to romanticize anonymous or barely known artists like Andrei Rublev or Albert York; guys about whom little is known, who functioned according to somewhat mysterious or unknowable rules. But the first could only operate at the pleasure of church and state and the latter was free to spout commercial chores because of family money.

I work my ass off putting the work out there but often fall short of meeting my meager financial obligations. I’m fortunate to have a family to help when needed. There are also longtime supporters of my work who step up over and over. I have little to complain about. I just can’t help wonder if there’s some better way to fund the work of people like me, whose work doesn’t easily fit into market slots.

I recently published an essay/review on a comic strip compilation about indie movie theater employees who foment a revolution. It’s a funny/untenable fantasy but I don’t have any brighter ideas for a way forward. The publication in which this article appears is on Substack, a platform that started as a paid newsletter service but has more recently expanded to include more social media features. I’m grateful to the people who run the publication and wish I could do more to help them grow their readership but don’t have the slightest clue how to do that.

I’ve tried to figure out how to use the subscription thing any number of ways with very mixed results. I hate quantifying my work in any way as it prompts dark thinking and stifles any kind of creativity but there’s just no way of getting around the fact that day-to-day life costs in units not measured by brushstrokes or word-count.

This newsletter, which I’ve kept up in various formats and on numerous platforms for over fifteen years, has lately been losing readers. I don’t know why and don’t want to know. Nothing good could come of hearing the answer.

My persistent fantasy of a government (or whatever other colossal entity) sending a truck to my front door every month and taking away what I made in exchange for chits or allowance keeps not coming true.

If you have any bright ideas about any of this, I’d love to hear them.