An Inner Conflict: Writer vs. Photographer

I wrote the following a few weeks ago while I was living in Ulcinj, Montenegro. It was my attempt to capture in words what I experienced from the balcony of the place where I was staying:

The ocean stood before me like a glistening blue tidal wave at peace with not proceeding. The South Adriatic engulfed nearly a third of my vision as steep hills littered with trees and orange roofs met the sea somewhere below me.

It was like an ocean sandwich, the whitish blue sky motionless on top and the noisy, earthy crust covering the bottom.

For some reason I find myself constantly needing to remember where I am, to remind myself that I'm still on Earth. Sometimes I'll open Google Maps on my laptop just to find Montenegro, that tiny squarish country nestled between Croatia and Albania across the ocean from the backside of Italy's boot. "That's where I am," I'll tell myself, feeling as though I need convincing. "That part of the world is real and it looks like this."

A butterfly breezes past, and then a bird. The birds are everywhere, the slow noisy roof-loving ones chattering away while aerial masters of the sky swoop down and past you in an instant, dogfighting invisible enemies with their black boomerang-shaped wings and their tiny sleek bodies that bulge out underneath, an agile dive-bomber perfectly designed by nature.

Somewhere in the distance to the left, across the valley of orange-tiled roofs where a few tall apartments stand looking out of place, over the tall slender coniferous trees nearer to the ocean, a chained machine whirrs to its master. And then the echo of a hammer, and then a skill saw.

The view was extremely photogenic. As the weather over the South Adriatic changed, the scenery would change with it, offering a new world for my eyes to feast on every day. I watched as entire weather systems developed before they rolled in and engulfed the town of Ulcinj. I watched cargo ships and sailboats make the trek to and from Italy and up and down the coast.

I had a birds-eye view of the whole region, like a watchmen in a tower on the lookout for what was to come. The photographer in me couldn't help but take photo after photo. There was no end to it, but that bothered the writer in me.

The endlessly amazing view made me think back to a time when there were no cameras. Who were the photographers then? Who captured the beauty of nature? Who captured the historic moments? Who captured the memory of those that mattered to them?

Writers. That's who. They captured everything through their writing. Using their mastery of language they painted images and conveyed feelings and emotions so that we could relive what mattered to them.

I realized then that if a photo is worth a thousand words, a writers' every snapshot is a wasted opportunity, one-thousand words of practice thrown away.

For thousands of years, writers and poets have spent hours, days, weeks, and months writing and rewriting in attempt to capture or recreate the most vivid and real depiction of what they were experiencing, all so that they could share it.

They spent decades honing their craft so that others could not only relive what they experienced but also learn from it and be inspired by it, so that they could be inspired to share their own dreams and stories. 

Defying death, they are still to this day influencing present-day writers and poets, encouraging them to push boundaries, serving as the human proof that language has power to reach far beyond its ability to assist with communication.

Capturing moments of time as it reflected on their minds, they achieved the seemingly impossible by recording something that our minds could easily translate with our imaginations. To this day, writers and poets are still reaching through time and touching us, talking to us, giving us an opportunity to taste the fruits of their hard-earned labor.

Click.

Now we press a button on a machine and be done with it. 

Click.

That's how long it takes for us to throw away thousands of years of effort.

What a tragedy. Not because we've lost appreciation for the power of language. No, it's a tragedy because of what we've so readily accepted as its replacement, such a flat and lifeless thing that pales in comparison to the depth and life-giving ability of language, its power to unlock our imagination and create worlds that can outdo even our dreams.

Click.

Photographs may capture our imagination, yes, but they don't give us a sky to fly.

But unfortunately the click is easy. It offers us a cheap and quick way to feel that we have captured something uniquely ours, a moment of time that we feel belongs to us but which in reality is stolen, not earned.

Human laziness knows no bounds. We will sacrifice almost anything for the opportunity to do less work.

How many of us will now experience a beautiful sunset, or the birth of our child, and spend just a few hours that evening trying to put that experience into words? "Eh, who has time for that."

Instead of painting beautiful stories with our imagination, we relinquish that command to an electronic box in the bedroom that has been programmed by a stranger with the worst intentions in mind.

We plop our kids down in front of animated drawings or ask them to play with machine-manufactured plastic toys instead of letting them chase real birds, play with real frogs, and pretend they can really fly.

There are many old cultures who shy away from the camera. They believe the photograph steals the soul. And maybe it does. Maybe it doesn't. At the very least, it steals our imagination.

However, given the opportunity to uninvent the camera, I would not choose to do so. I know it's just another evolutionary step on our journey, an evolutionary step towards our species realizing that no camera, no matter how many pixels or dimensions it captures, will be able to overtake the human imagination.

The camera may assist the imagination, yes, but it cannot replace it. The human imagination has the power to imagine something better. It has the power to dream.

But does that mean we should all just throw away our cameras and become writers instead? I don't think so. My intuition tells me that there's something special about photography. If the eyes are the window to the soul, then surely a photograph offers its viewer a key to that window.

The camera may have the power to steal our imagination, but it also has the power to show us the truth. Writing and language have the power to manipulate and spread propaganda but does that make them worth abandoning?

The camera, like language and music, is one more tool for humanity to express itself. Photography offers a way for others to see the world through our eyes, through the eyes of one unique individual, as he or she saw it. Writing has that ability too, but writing gives the reader more freedom to involve him or herself in the story; there's more room for individual interpretation.

This is perhaps why I'm such an fan of untainted, unmodified, unedited photographs and why I feel that the story behind each photograph is as important as the photograph itself. Without the story, a photograph has no soul. It's the story that brings the photograph to life.

I'm not sure why this is such a revelation for me. Perhaps it's because until now the art of photography was always enough for me to pursue it. Now I'm realizing that if I'm going to continue pursuing photography, I need to start exploring photojournalism. 

Maybe through photojournalism I can learn to bridge the gap between writing and photography and find a balance between the two that doesn't leave me feeling as though I'm betraying one or the other.

Photography As Art

Why do so many people spend so much time photographing things? We take photos of ourselves, our babies, our friends, and our pets. We photograph the things that make us feel, those moments that appear to give our life meaning, to make it worth having lived.

We witness the beauty of nature but quickly separate ourselves from it, sacrificing the purity of that moment, for what? With such haste we dutifully capture as if witnessing some alien landscape, as if we were alien explorers sent to an unknown world to document for a future generation the fleetingly precious moments that make up our transient existence.

We make baseless uneducated assumptions about what importance future generations will place on the interestingness of our lives, while the truth is they'll likely be just as preoccupied with their own existence as we are with ours, doing whatever activity helps them avoid the unbearable thought of their own impending doom.

The self-portrait speaks the loudest to me. It's as if the soul inside turned the camera on itself and cried out, "I am here! I exist! My life has meaning!"

What is it about human nature that attracts so many of us to capturing moments of time? Is there something in our subconscious, something that remains aware of the limit on our lifespan, something that feels driven by a sense of self-preservation to seek out anything that might help slow or preserve time?

And where is all of this heading? For how much longer will the human race be obsessed with this newfound ability to capture reflections of time, to create something that appears to be uniquely ours but in reality whose value and meaning fades as quickly as the memory of its creators' existence?

When I was a teenager I came across a nature calendar that contained the exact same photo I had taken of a particular waterfall in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. The photographer must have taken it from the exact same spot that I stood to take mine. But there was one difference: he used a slower shutter speed and that made the waterfall look misty as it came down the rocks. It was more beautiful and aesthetically appealing than mine, which, having been taken with a faster shutter speed, showed the water frozen in its tracks.

At first, the photo in the calendar filled me with a sense of pride. It was proof that I probably had an intuitive eye for composing 'good photos'. But that's where the story ends. I never again looked at that photo in the calendar. I didn't keep a copy of it and I never saw it again. Instead I enlarged my photo of the waterfall, along with several other photos that I deemed 'frame worthy', added it to a cheap frame, and hung it on the wall.

It didn't matter to me that someone else had taken the exact same photo, of the exact same waterfall, at around the exact same time of the year. It didn't matter to me that the other photo was better than mine. My photo meant more to me because I took it, because it was my photo, a frozen moment of my time captured by me.

But is there really any difference between my time and your time? If ten thousand people take a photo of the Taj Mahal, is there really any reason for me to take a photo of it? And then why take any photos in the first place? What happens in the distant future when everything has been photographed? When every single angle that could be captured, has been captured?

These thoughts lead me back to photography as art.

We create art as a way of expressing ourselves, as a way of capturing and communicating to others what we feel, but true art is not created because the artists' feelings have great importance, but rather because what the artist expresses -- the expression itself -- allows others to experience more of life.

If we focus our time and effort on creating art, then that is time well spent. But what is art? Art is not capture (what the camera does) but rather expression (what is done with the camera). The difference is subtle but important. One requires thinking about what you're doing, understanding why you're doing it, and constantly seeking to improve, while the other lets you get away with laziness and ignorance, pointing a device in the direction of your feelings and pressing a button.

After decades of taking photos, I can see that I have the skills to pursue photography as art, but is that what I want to do? Is my time better spent pursuing writing as art? Or is there some intersection of the two that will allow me to create better art?

And with a newborn on the way, I can't help but wonder: How much of my daughter's life will I be a photographer-dad and how much will I be a dad-dad?

Standing Alone in the Darkness

Creativity feels good, being free to brainstorm and think and try and test and then scrap it all if it doesn't work and start over from scratch, all of that sounds fantastic when looked at from a distance, no matter how small that distance may be. But the truth is that living as a creative, working to embrace creativity wholly and completely on a regular basis, in between these dryly dull rituals of endless and inescapable routines, to exist as a creative soul and create things with creative energy, that's like wrestling a thousand-pound gorilla inside a thick, dense rainforest, in the middle of the night. It's like facing a crocodile in a swamp where you have no footing, and then standing there in the pitch black with no knowledge of where you are or what's lurking nearby.

Once in awhile you feel something in that darkness, you grab onto it, and for that one endlessly brief moment in time things feel a bit better, you feel a bit more in control, the stuff you're trying to do seems to happen a little easier and then you find yourself suddenly doing it and you start to tell yourself that YES, you can do this, you can work with this, you are a powerful and unstoppable force of nature because now you've found it, that hold, that little thing that seems to make all the impossibility of what it took to get there seem insignificant and unimportant and you forget, very quickly, how much effort it took to arrive at where you are, how much unknown you had to face, how much self-conscious ridicule and self-doubt you had to let go of, how much fear you had to put aside to find that little thing you're now clinging onto, that preciously delicate but incredibly potent little flow you're tapping into, hoping, wishing that it will never stop running, that it will never go away, that you'll never lose it again. But you know that's an unreasonable request from the universe. You know that soon your fantastic grip on this creative world you cherish so dearly will be gone, and you will once again return to being that tortured, naked soul, standing in the dark with so many unknowns all around, so many thousand-pound gorillas ready to wrestle and so many prehistoric crocodiles in these waters, and now you're right here, facing them all over again, looking, searching, waiting for that one thing, that one thread of connection, prepared to embrace that flow at a moments notice, ready to begin, alert, aware, patiently understanding that this wonderful thing called creativity is a gift worth waiting for, a gift worth giving up comfort to stand there, all alone in the dark.

Traveling by Intuition

A big part of how I create and travel involves tapping into energies, these invisible and hard to describe forces that seem to connect my physical self with another realm, a realm that, if I could see it, I imagine would look like strings of energy crisscrossing each other and linking together other, highly focused endpoints, all changing in response to the location, the environment, and the energies of the people who were present.

Trying to describe these invisible forces always conjures up images similar to those neuron maps of the brain and the maps of the Internet, only instead of being fixed and static, they’re alive and moving, constantly changing, like a universe inhaling and exhaling, birthing new galaxies with each breath.

I believe that we all have the ability to feel and sense these energies, to receive their signals and tune into them, to redirect and focus them like a magnifying glass focusing otherwise weak beams of sunlight.

When I travel, I feel the different energies and forces present in each place. But there seems to be a catch: I usually can’t feel or tap into them until I’ve settled down for a few weeks.

When I’m moving from one place to another — flying in an airplane, riding on a train, or doing a road trip — the energy generated by the motion is itself extremely powerful and chaotic. This chaotic energy seems to obscure the more stable energy that I can feel when I stop moving, the energy that I feel when I begin creating within a framework of daily routines.

Whenever someone asks me how I decide where I’m traveling to next, my response is always the same: I travel by intuition. I don’t travel to check off a list of places, or to experience a set of cultures, or to taste different foods. I travel by intuition. But what does that mean? What does it mean to ‘travel by intuition’?

It means that when I connect with the energy of a particular place, I allow myself to linger, to tap into the creative energies and allow them to change me, to give me fuel for creating and contemplating and growing until something (usually my intuition) tells me it’s time to move on. In traveling for the past three years, I’ve recognized that the “time to move on” feeling usually occurs within three months.

I’m convinced that I’m not the only one who taps into these energies and I suspect that various places around the world known for attracting artistic and intellectual types are that way because they’re actually strong sources of this invisible energy, sources that most of these people are unknowingly tapping into by living and working there. I suspect that cities appear where they do for the same reasons.

When I arrived in Tasmania a little over a month ago, I could tell within the first few hours that the energy here was strong. I wasn’t at all surprised when I learned that Tasmania is fast becoming known for attracting artistic types.

However, I was caught off guard when, within the first week of arriving, I felt an unrelenting desire to cancel the rest of my travel plans — a week in Perth and a month in Thailand — to spend more time here in Tasmania.

Now, after spending six months in Australia, I’m preparing to leave to visit family in the United States. I’m thinking about where I’ll go next in January and the only place that keeps calling back to me is Tasmania... and I haven’t even left yet.

Why Tasmania? I’m really not sure. All I can say is that my intuition tells me that I should return, that something says this is where I should be and that this is where I will find the creative energy that I need. Creative energy that I need for what? I’m not sure of that either. That too feels like an invisible force present in my future but undefinable to the present.

A Writers Manifesto

I, am a writer, and this, is my manifesto. 

I write to explore and I publish to share.

I write to develop an intimate relationship with my mind, to make sense of that which doesn’t, and to explore the intangible in a tangible form.

Writing creates a conduit, a channel that guides and gives focus to an otherwise chaotic spillway of thoughts. I seek to understand, but to understand I must first learn. To learn, I must first listen. To listen, I must first empty.

A mind which is not empty has no room to listen.

I respect the power of language because I am a craftsman of words. I build cathedrals of letters and paint cities with vibrations.

I am always striving to improve my craft. I treat it with care, because my craft holds magic. I do not rush, because here, there be dragons.

I honor those who have come before me, but I recognize that we all drink from the same potent river of timeless wisdom, a place from which all writers quote.

I publish to share my creations, to give life to the lifeless and wings to the wingless. I release only the most flightworthy of work because I take pride in fine craftsmanship.

I know that my perspective adds value to the life of my reader. I know that others read with anticipation because, as I’ve learned firsthand, finding someone who sees the world through our eyes gives validation to our very existence.

I share my work to set it free and to amplify its potential to change the world.

I, am a craftsman of words, and this, is my manifesto.

I write to explore and to understand the intangible. 

I publish to share and inspire freedom.

Notes: Letters to a Young Poet – Letter 2

Written between 1902 and 1908, "Letters To A Young Poet are ten letters written to a young man about to enter the German military. His name was Franz Kappus, he was 19 years old, and he wrote Rilke looking for guidance and a critique of some of his poems. Rilke was himself only 27 when the first letter was written. The resulting five year correspondence is a virtual owner's manual on what it is (and what is required) to be an artist and a person."

While you can purchase the book, you can also find the full set of letters online for free. I've been going through them slowly and keeping track of my favorite passage from each letter. I'll be sharing those passages here over the next few weeks.

Here's my favorite passage from Letter 2, written April 5, 1903:

Irony: Don't let yourself be controlled by it, especially during uncreative moments. When you are fully creative, try to use it, as one more way to take hold of fife. Used purely, it too is pure, and one needn't be ashamed of it; but if you feel yourself becoming too familiar with it, if you are afraid of this growing familiarity, then turn to great and serious objects, in front of which it becomes small and helpless. Search into the depths of Things: there, irony never descends and when you arrive at the edge of greatness, find out whether this way of perceiving the world arises from a necessity of your being. For under the influence of serious Things it will either fall away from you (if it is something accidental), or else (if it is really innate and belongs to you) it will grow strong, and become a serious tool and take its place among the instruments which you can form your art with.

Notes: Letters to a Young Poet – Letter 1

When I met Lisa Rigano earlier this year she recommended that I read Letters to a Young Poet, and I'm really glad she did because these letters are a goldmine of wisdom.

Written between 1902 and 1908, "Letters To A Young Poet are ten letters written to a young man about to enter the German military. His name was Franz Kappus, he was 19 years old, and he wrote Rilke looking for guidance and a critique of some of his poems. Rilke was himself only 27 when the first letter was written. The resulting five year correspondence is a virtual owner's manual on what it is (and what is required) to be an artist and a person."

While you can purchase the book, you can also find the full set of letters online for free. I've been going through them slowly and keeping track of my favorite passage from each letter. I'll be sharing those passages here over the next few weeks.

Here's my favorite passage from Letter 1:

Don't write love poems; avoid those forms that are too facile and ordinary: they are the hardest to work with, and it takes a great, fully ripened power to create something individual where good, even glorious, traditions exist in abundance. So rescue yourself from these general themes and write about what your everyday life offers you; describe your sorrows and desires, the thoughts that pass through your mind and your belief in some kind of beauty Describe all these with heartfelt, silent, humble sincerity and, when you express yourself, use the Things around you, the images from your dreams, and the objects that you remember. If your everyday life seems poor, don't blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is no poverty and no poor, indifferent place. And even if you found yourself in some prison, whose walls let in none of the world's sound - wouldn't you still have your childhood, that jewel beyond all price, that treasure house of memories? Turn your attention to it. Try to raise up the sunken feelings of this enormous past; your personality will grow stronger, your solitude will expand and become a place where you can live in the twilight, where the noise of other people passes by, far in the distance. And if out of , this turning within, out of this immersion in your own world, poems come, then you will not think of asking anyone whether they are good or not. Nor will you try to interest magazines in these works: for you will see them as your dear natural possession, a piece of your life, a voice from it. A work of art is good if it has arisen out of necessity. That is the only way one can judge it.

Notes: The Inner Artist and the Inner Businessman

I posted the following thoughts on Shanna Mann's blog post, My Art Is My Business-- And Now Both Are Stuck!, about how I've been dealing with my inner artist and my inner businessman since starting this Journal:

What I've been doing is listening to what works and what doesn't, keeping my artist and my businessman separate enough to learn from each other (as opposed to combining them and trying to find compromises). For example, late last year I started monetizing my creative writing for the first time and since then both my inner artist and my inner businessman have learned a lot.

The artist has learned that having people paying monthly for a subscription to my writing is actually a huge distraction: I feel obligated to create and publish at a certain frequency because people are paying me monthly and a lot of extra energy goes into overcoming that pressure and simply creating when I'm ready to create.

The businessman has learned that creation is an absolute necessity and that perhaps offering an annual subscription at a lower price-point would be more harmonious with the way the artist creates. It would also give the artist a huge block of time (one year) to create and to provide value in exchange for that subscription.

All of this, of course, is specific to the way I create. Others may be able to create and publish something every day. I know that I spend more time diving into topics in my head and reflecting on ideas before I publish them.

What I think is important is that the artist and the businessman learn to communicate and share information with each other. For some, that could mean the artist needs one full week of creativity to create his or her art, entirely free of business tasks. Then, perhaps the businessman or businesswoman comes in and switches to business-mode (or hires someone else to take care of the business and marketing aspects altogether).

It's important to continue experimenting, to continue trying new ways of assigning responsibilities and time to the inner artist and the inner businessman/businesswoman.

Notes: Your Blog is a Barometer

Thom Chambers writes about using your publishing platform to detect when your personal growth is stalling:

Your blog is something of a barometer. If you're overflowing with ideas, news, and observations, then the chances are good that you're doing interesting things beyond that blog. You're learning, you're doing exciting work, you're on an adventure.

Whenever you get stuck for a blog post, then, take it as a sign of a bigger malaise.

If you can't find anything interesting to say about what you’re doing, maybe it's because you need to do more interesting stuff.

Another way to get stuck is by fear. You could also think of fear of failure as a barometer for success. Sometimes we just need to get over ourselves and recognize that failure really isn't so bad. Let go of fear and just be.

I think it's also important to note on the flip side that if you can't find anything interesting to say, that's not always a bad thing. Sometimes it's okay to say less.

Listen to yourself, listen to the universe

We're all filters now, constantly presented with the task of deciding to read something or ignore it, to share a thought with the world on Twitter or let it go unheard. For creators this challenge of filtering can become overwhelming. Satya Colombo writes about a recent experience with this:

So, here's the dilemma: do I share what compels me, what sparks this very intimate recognition within me, pulls a small heart string... Or do I share the thing I think other people might resonate with? The thing I think might actually be more compelling?

In this case, I decided to just shelf it, and do nothing. [...]

The point is — how to decide what to create, and what to share, and what voices to listen to in deciding…?!
Sometimes you just know — that thing you just did is Fricken good. It's ready to fly. But more often than not, there's this gray area…

A lot of people get stuck in that gray area. Especially when trying something new, or finally listening to those voices and actually pursuing a soul calling. Everyone has an opinion, or an idea of how to do it based on what they've seen and done, and unless they're really amazingly brilliant and/or they know you really well, their opinion is absolute crap when it comes to you. Totally useless. Please don't listen to them.

There's a lot of voices you can choose to listen to, but then there's one really awesome one that rules them all, and it's the language of the universe when it comes through your spirit.

Some people hear it speaking through a tree they're sitting next to, or the wind rustling overhead. Sometimes it comes through on the smile of a child, or a flash in the eye of the checkout bagging girl. You recognize it when you're really open to it — when you're connected to yourself, and actively surrendering to the marvelous creative pull of your work. Whatever and whenever that might be.

As creators, we're constantly presented with the task of figuring out if we should create that which our audience will most likely understand and appreciate or if we should create what feels real, authentic, and true to ourselves. I believe a balance between the two can and should be found, but often that requires a very deep and thorough understanding of both sides: an understanding of ourselves and of those who are listening.

When in doubt, my philosophy is to do without. If I'm not sure about something, I hold back and create and share nothing. While this is certainly a safe route, I think it's also a fear-based route. Playing it safe is easier than making a mistake or creating something that is misunderstood, but it's also a sure way to mediocrity. It's far better to risk making mistakes and asking for forgiveness than to play it safe and remain quietly invisible to the world.

Notes: Willing to go naked

A beautiful quote by May Sarton, from Journal of a Solitude, referred to me by Joy:

"How one lives as a private person is intimately bound into the work. And at some point, I believe one has to stop holding back for fear of alienating some imaginary reader or real relative or friend, and come out with personal truth. If we are to understand the human condition, and if we are to accept ourselves in all the complexity, self-doubt, extravagance of feeling, guilt, joy, the slow freeing of the self to its full capacity for action and creation, both as human being and artist, we have to know all we can about one another, and we have to be willing to go naked."

Income Ethics: Digital Art and Equality

Photo: Digital Art and Equality

This essay is the third in a four-part series on income ethics. The series describes my discovery of a need for income ethics, explains why we need to define our enough, discusses the problem with art and equality in the digital age (this essay), and lays out the income ethics that I have defined for my own creative work. If you'd like to follow my work, please subscribe or check back here for updates.

The art of expressing and conveying ideas through the medium of writing wasn't something I consciously learned, but rather it was a seed that sprouted inside me at an early age. Up until recently, I had only treated the growth of that seed as a passionate hobby, a fun talent that I would enjoy when I had the opportunity and the inclination to do so.

But the transition to simple nomadic lifestyle combined with the experience of traveling through developing countries had not only opened my eyes to a planetary social responsibility, it also allowed me to recognize the full potential of my creative work in a globally connected society.

The combination of feeling a planetary responsibility and recognizing the potential of my creative work necessitated the need to dedicate more of my time to sharing that work and contributing to the world in a way that best utilized my skills, talents, and passions. It was no longer enough that I dabbled in creativity when the urge presented itself.

Living as a nomad and focusing on creative work required very little income, but after a year of living hand-to-mouth and leaning on the goodwill of friends and family, it became apparent that even a simple lifestyle requires some income, a means of supporting oneself and obtaining the ability to redirect abundance to those in need.

If we're not able to fully take care of ourselves, we cannot fully help others. When our needs are met, we can serve others, and when we have more than we need, we can do more to serve.

Note: In the context of this essay, the terms 'art' and 'creative work' are used to represent a tangible manifestation of creative effort; the terms 'artist' and 'digital artist' are used to represent the individual doing the creating. There is a difference between knowledge work and creative work: the former involves the skill of understanding and working with information and the latter involves the creation of new and unique things.

The Missing 'Enough' and a Broken Status Quo

As I began to think about how I could earn a simple living through my creative endeavors, several things felt wrong about the way others were currently monetizing their creative work. I found there were no limits in place. There was no monetary ceiling, no way to be held accountable, no definition of 'enough' and no dedication to maintaining that enough.

This lack of knowing what's enough often led in one of two directions: 1) the artist stopped creating art altogether, refocusing their monetary efforts away from creating the art they loved because 'their' art didn't seem to sell, or 2) they became so successful that their work stopped being about art and instead became an automated system of receiving income; their work transitioned from the creation of art to the art of managing the flow of income.

In addition to this risk of being distracted by income, it also troubled me that putting a price on my work seemed to create and support the global inequalities that I wanted to help eliminate. For example, if I sold a piece of work for $20USD, people in the more affluent areas of the world might be able to afford it while someone in a developing country might need to spend all their wages for an entire month to make the same purchase.

As soon as I put a price on my work, I effectively caged it and created walls that many people would never be able to climb. The work would eventually disappear into a monetary black hole, dying a quiet death in the shadows where a large percentage of the world would never see it.

Isn't the point of creative work to create something that can outlast us? Isn't the reason we create to share an artistic expression of ourselves, to create a tangible manifestation of our creative effort? And if so, why would we release and share our work in a casket?

The problem of pricing digital art intrigued me the most because it was such a fundamental problem. Every digital artist I had met spoke of the difficulty in finding 'the right price' for their work. There are all kinds of strategies and tactics that can be used to gauge what prices our audience will tolerate, but that seemed like a bandaid to a bigger issue.

Pricing Digital Art in the Global Marketplace

It's only in the past twenty years that the human species has started publishing creative work en masse to a globally accessible digital medium, so I decided to think about how art in the physical world compares with art in the digital world. It's likely that the problems with digital art originate from our inexperience operating in a global marketplace and from the unconscious application of methods used for selling non-digital art in localized marketplaces.

If you want to buy an original oil painting from a well-known artist, it will cost a lot of money because that piece of work required a huge time investment from the artist. The artist is only one person and they only have so much time available to create new work.

In the digital world however, if an artist creates a piece of digital art (i.e., creative work of any type: writing, audio, video, or graphical art), they can sell as many copies of that work as they want with no additional effort and essentially no additional cost.

When it comes to pricing that work, this causes all sorts of problems.

If a non-digital artist allows his physical artwork to be copied, pricing can start with the current valuation of the original and then, based on the quality and number of copies being created, a logical price per copy can be achieved. These prices can then be based on the geographic location they're being sold to accommodate for differences in local currency.

However, on the Internet there is no such thing as an 'original' piece of artwork (original in the sense of not a copy) because all art published online is essentially a copy. And there is no quality differential per copy either, as all copies are identical in quality to the previous. Geographic location is also irrelevant as the Internet is flat and each 'netizen' is equal.

So, the price of digital art largely becomes arbitrary, based on whatever the artist feels the work is worth to them. That 'feeling of worth' is entirely relative to the local economic status of the individual and to their own valuation of money. But both of those are irrelevant online because the Internet is a global community and a global marketplace.

If we walk outside and ask our neighbor how much $1USD is worth to them, there's a good chance we can reach a mutual agreement on its worth. But if we go from a developed country like the United States to a poor country somewhere in Africa, we'll be hard-pressed to find someone with which to reach a similar agreement.

On the Internet, someone from a poor county in Africa is essentially just as close to us online as our next door neighbor. And as a result, using localized feelings of value cannot be applied online unless we're willing to exclude certain people based purely on where they were born.

For a global marketplace to exist, there needs to be a common currency. There needs to be something that everybody agrees is worth the same no matter where they're from. Without that, a global marketplace could not exist. Right now the common currency we share is the currency called 'free' and that's why the growth of the Internet can be correlated with the amount of 'free' stuff available.

But free isn't really a currency. It has no monetary value and it can't buy us food or shelter. I realized that if I chose to solve the problems of pricing digital art using the currency of free, I would need to rely on donations and/or give up the full-time creation of art to do other kinds of work.

When pure survival is at stake, a donation-based living doesn't feel right to me. Working and receiving something in return for that work feels more ethical than simply existing and asking others to support my existence. So, I needed to find a compromise that would allow me to create art full-time and still make a living.

Crossing the Bridge of Art, Income, and Equality

For over a year now I've wrestled with roadblocks related to the generation of income from creative work. I've spent months contemplating and reflecting on the crossroads of art, income, and equality and I've exchanged dozens of emails and held many conversations with friends.

But several questions remained unanswered and I refused to even attempt to earn a single penny through my creative work until I came up with at least some sort of solution that felt intuitively correct.

  • How could I put a price on my work without simultaneously caging it indefinitely?
  • How could I monetize my work without risking the distraction of income?
  • How could I ensure that all of my work remained free and accessible to everyone?
  • How could I maintain my enough and always give something back to those in need?

What I eventually arrived at was the conclusion that to cross that bridge -- to personally feel at peace with generating income from my creative work -- I needed a framework, a system for giving back, for holding myself accountable, and for ensuring that my values were not compromised.

Creating this framework meant clearly defining my 'enough' and stating upfront my commitment to giving back everything except what was needed for the lifestyle I chose to live. It meant creating a way that would ensure everyone, including those who could not afford my work, would still be given the opportunity to access, build upon, and benefit from that work.

What I needed to do was to define my ethics for generating income from creative work.

Until global equality is a closer reality, it is up to the individuals who are creating, publishing, and selling digital creative work in the global marketplace to accept the responsibility for creating their own set of ethics to ensure their art remains ethical.

Read the previous part of the series: Income Ethics: Planetary Social Responsibility
Read the final part of the series: Income Ethics: A Framework for Ethical Income

Create to Share

Have you ever seen a baby get excited about a new toy and then almost immediately turn around and hold it up with bright eyes and a big smile, pleading with you to share in the excitement? The baby has no expectations, only a desire to share.

When we share without expectation, we're sharing love. When we create without expectation, we're creating with love. But if we put a condition on sharing the things that we create -- I'll share this if you give me that -- then we disconnect from the ultimate reason that we possess the power to create: to share love.

That doesn't mean we can't receive something in return for what we create. Receiving in return for creating isn't the same as creating with the intention of receiving. The latter is based in scarcity, the former in abundance.

Like the baby pleading to share in the joy of discovery, we instinctively want to share what we love. When we do something because we love it, the act of doing it becomes enough. When we create with the intention of sharing, everything we receive in return becomes a gift.