Patrons needed

Even if you bought an exceptional Michael Kelly guitar at Musicians Friend and made the best album in the world there's no guarantee that the Wider Music World will notice you. I've just been watching a programme on Choice TV which pointed out that some musicians who have music on Spotify have to have up to 125 downloads of one of their tracks before they earn as much as a dollar. It isn't Spotify that's causing this issue, it's the fact that there are an awful lot of musos out there, and they're all chasing your money. Social media is a good way to improve your chances of being heard (as one of the women musicians interviewed discussed), but it takes a fair amount of promotion all the same, and most of that's going to have to be done by you, otherwise that one dollar you've earned will be eaten up by some expensive advertising campaign. And that takes away from your productive music time.

I was talking to one of the older ladies at church (older than me, that is) this morning, and she was telling me about her artist son (he's now in his sixties), and how it's never been easy for him to promote himself. He's had exhibitions and his name is known but that kind of promotion is hard work for him, as it is for many artists. Most artists - musicians, painters, writers etc - need a patron to survive well enough to be able to do their best work. The reality is of course that most musicians, painters, writers etc don't have patrons, and struggle. They have to deal with daily life, real life, and that's another factor that affects their work.

This is a bit of a minor rant, really.

Abani on artists

"Artists were essentially shamans or priests or seers in the old days and I think art is still the primary focus of looking for ways to deal with the questions of being human. I think you can do that while meditating in your room. OK, so I went to prison, I suffered, but I'm here drinking a three-dollar coffee checking my email on a fancy gadget. The problem is we're looking for something that doesn't exist. We're looking for authenticity. There is no such thing as authenticity. There is either good art or bad art. Art is never about its content. It's about its scaffolding."


Chris Abani

Artitsts and language

For language, like a story or a painting, is alive. Ultimately, it will be the artists who will change the language (as Chaucer did, as Dante did, as Joyce did), not the committees. For an artist is not a consumer, as our commercials urge us to be. An artist is a nourisher and a creator who knows that during the act of creation there is collaboration. We do not work alone.

Madeleine L'Engle
Walking on Water

Artists' dilemma

The artists' dilemma is that they may find themselves forging ahead into an often indifferent world to offer what they have to share. To continue to move ahead with conviction demands courage and a degree of persistence and confidence in the worth of their gift. Sometimes we have to reassure ourselves that we and those gifts really have value. Perhaps we may more authentically see ourselves as couriers of what has been given us to give away.

Luci Shaw
"Creativity, Gift, Ambition, and Humility" in Radix Magazine

Sport overwhelms the Arts

Okay, can anyone tell me why the Otago Daily Times - and no doubt they're not the only paper like this in the country - allows room for three or four pages of sport news every day, and now puts out a new supplement on Fridays, which consists entirely of sport, and takes up another 16 pages!

Can anyone tell me why a quarter of the television 'news' each night consists of sport - and why there are often other sport-focused items in the rest of the news as well? Does sport get no other time/space on television? Nope, it takes over Saturdays to a great extent, and, if there's a really important game on, or the Olympics, or the Commonwealth Games, or the Rugby World Cup, it will get full time on these occasions as well. And all this without mentioning Sky Sport, which goes on day and night into eternity.

This would be fine if sport was the only recreation human beings indulged in, but it ain't!

My rant (which isn't by any means a new one) was boosted again by the fact that the play I'm currently in [Shadowlands] received no review in the ODT. The photo of the cast that the ODT's own photographer came out to take was bundled off into a little corner in the once-weekly Arts section (all two pages of it compared to the more than thirty or so pages sports gets each week) - and was so small no one could be distinguished in it. And the 'report' in the Star midweek paper was nothing but text. Again the photo that had been taken specially failed to appear.

It's enough to make me go out and punch someone, but then I'd probably wind up requiring a Medical Injury Lawyer and I can't afford that at the moment, not now that I'm a retired person (have I mentioned that previously? I have?)

And if you think I'm being aggressive, check out this video of the writer Harlen Ellison going full bore complaining about the way writers are regarded as not needing to be paid for their work...in fact, what he's saying applies to all artists.



All we ask for is a little acknowledgement...

More on the circus - more than the ODT has reported, in fact!

Just one other thought about the post I wrote on the Zirka Circus yesterday. It's a curious thing that there is no programme available for the circus, where you might find out who the artists are, nor is there any information on them on the website. Only the photos in the gallery section. Nothing more.

This seems fairly typical of circuses - at least the ones that travel throughout NZ. The artists are anonymous to the nth degree. And our local paper doesn't even seemed to have reported that the Zirka circus is in town. Very strange.

So I'm doing my little best here to promote it. Go to the Zirka Circus. It's worth your money!

Random thoughts on the Zirka Circus

Went to see the Zirka Circus with some members of my family today. Very noisy, music-wise, but the music itself was good and very suitable for what was going on. Quite a small troupe – I counted around twenty at the end, almost equally men and women. A youngish man and woman took the lead in practically everything; he was on for around twenty minutes solid at the beginning, and she turned up in every one of the women’s acts (except the cycle riding at the end, I think) and often appeared when the two of them came in as a romantic couple – there wasn’t any story as such, although it started off seeming as though there might be.

No ringmaster – they seem to have gone the way of the dodo – and very little vocal stuff from the cast, except to shout ‘Hoi’ or some such when they’d performed a trick. The two clowns (both white, as opposed to an otherwise Asian company) didn’t speak words, but used whistles to ‘speak’ (adding to the general piercing noise when they both got going). There was at least one child in the troupe: a boy who couldn’t have been much more than twelve, if that. He was very small, certainly. He did some remarkable balancing on his right hand – including ‘climbing’ down and up the stairs on it.

Most of the standard (Asian) acts were there: the swinging around on silken material; nine women on a single bike; balancing plates on sticks; swinging those things consisting of two ‘weights’ (for want of a better word) held together by a rope; the women doing the string held on two sticks (one in each hand) thing where they toss a round item with a ridge in it so that it stays on the string; the men on large metal double-sided wheels that they begin by wobbling around at speed and gradually building up until they’re balancing on one edge or such; the main woman doing the balancing on chairs thing where she gradually adds another chair; three women doing juggling with large balls while lying on the backs – and eventually doing it while up above each other; most of the men playing with Mexican style bowler hats and juggling with them (in that way that makes it look as though one of them is always suspended in mid-air), and then of course standing on each other and tossing them around; tumbling through hoops. You can see examples of all these in the gallery on the Zirka website.

Their TV ad is there too - it gives an idea of the energy levels, but is over very quickly (the double-wheel is momentarily visible).

The end of the first half consisted of a double wheel (similar to what I’ve just attempted to describe) held together in the centre by various metal struts, and slung in the air by solid cables. I’m not sure how it all worked, but it was a bit like two of those endless wheels that mice are sometimes given to race around in joined together. One of the white males got in one of them and got the whole thing swinging around so that he would go from floor level right up and around to the ceiling and back down again. The other wheel of course was like a counterbalance to this, and one of the Asian guys got into the other side and began doing daredevil stuff such as going upside down and finally walking on the outside of the wheel as it hit its highest point, slipping through the metal structure in the middle and going up over the other wheel as it reached the peak – then doing juggling while he was up there, and then putting on a blindfold and doing it. That was certainly the most breathtaking act in the circus.

There was a bit of a magic section in which a woman was put in a box and fiery brands passed through it – then she wasn’t there when they opened it, and then three women climbed out of the top. Even if they do do it with mirrors it was pretty impressive.

The whole thing had heaps of energy, one act sliding into the next with little hiatus. Lots of dry ice to give atmosphere. And several members of the cast selling stuff before the show and during the interval – including the little boy. No star-glamour here!

Photo of the Zirka Circus Tent by Cafe Cecil