into the wild blue yonder--again

Though this is an off-topic post, there's a chance that it might deal
with some things common to anyone trying to get by as a creative
person.

This Friday my lease runs out, and for the third time in the last
year I'll be moving the good stuff into storage and renting an
overpriced room until I can find something better. The area I live
in, Cape Cod, Massachusetts, is driven by a tourist-oriented economy
and affordable housing is all but nonexistent. So while I can rent at
a fairly reasonable rate during the cold winter months, yearly
rentals and warm weather rentals are inflated well beyond my means.
(For the record I continue to live here because I'm a divorced parent
who wishes to sustain the nearly daily relationship I presently have
with my son, and moving off-Cape would alter that arrangement in a
way that I'm not prepared to deal with.)

You see I'm one of those people who are smart enough to know that
they're stupid, but too stupid to do anything about it! So at every
consequential juncture I forsook career-oriented self-preservation
for creativity and now I work a fulltime job and can't afford a place
to live. Surely this is one of the toughest challenges creative
people face... how to reconcile getting by financially and
esthetically... how to fulfill responsibilities and not forgo
creative autonomy...

At different times in my life I've made pretty good money as a guitar
teacher, but the way I'm constituted I'd apparently rather scrape by
at some odd-job rather than get paid okay to do something with music
that I don't particularly enjoy... so it would appear that I'm
screwed! However, my present expostulation notwithstanding, I think
I've come to accept that, and despite the havoc it's brought my way,
that creative spark still burns bright enough to fill my dreams at
night and get me out of bed in the morning.

In any event, before I close up shop tomorrow or Tuesday and pay a
cement closet to imprison the computer and the guitars until who-
knows-when, I'll check in to see if anyone cares to share any
personal wisdom gleaned from the battlefield... I mean I'll gladly
waste my life on music, but if I'm going to do that then I'd at least
like to be able to do the goddamn music!

Dan Stearns
Guitarist-composer-microtonalist:
http://www.zebox.com/daniel_anthony_stearns/

Dan,

All I can say is count me (publicly) as one of the people in your corner, urging the universe to be wise and fair. Beyond that I'll write you off-list...

Best,
Jon

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Jon Szanto" <JSZANTO@A...> wrote:
> Dan,
>
> All I can say is count me (publicly) as one of the people in your
corner, urging the universe to be wise and fair. Beyond that I'll
write you off-list...
>
> Best,
> Jon

likewise!

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "wallyesterpaulrus"

/tuning/topicId_43722.html#43728

<wallyesterpaulrus@y...> wrote:
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Jon Szanto" <JSZANTO@A...> wrote:
> > Dan,
> >
> > All I can say is count me (publicly) as one of the people in your
> corner, urging the universe to be wise and fair. Beyond that I'll
> write you off-list...
> >
> > Best,
> > Jon
>
> likewise!

***Meetoo... but don't forget, Dan, your *own* Charles Ives
paradigm. It ultimately works best for some people...

J. pehrson