The phrase "free water for artists" came to me while talking to myself and making scone dogs.
(I originally got my recipe from my mom who got it from a fellow co-work in Wikwemikong, but in search of finding some recipes to share with you I found this link with a range of breads. I see some experimentation in my near future.)
At the time I was thinking of the 70 hour work week I had ahead of me and how little I was looking forward to it. At the time I was attempting to spin the work week in a positive way, thinking of ways to help myself through it (chocolate cake being one of them). But of course my mind slipped into the black hole of negative space of hating working at a restaurant and dreamed about the work I’d rather be doing. I had a thought of how amazing it would be too work on my art form, dance, for 11 hours a day opposed to working 11 hour shifts at a restaurant. I started to think about how the art scene would blossom if all artists were given 11 hours a day to produce work and hone their craft. I imagined how both the amount of art that is being produced and the quality at which it is produced would sky rocket. I know for a fact if I worked in dance (training, cross-training, learning new genres, improvising, creating choreography, rehearsing, tech-ing, performing) the quality of my work would increase dramatically. Had I mentioned that I work 11 hour shifts? And that I would KILL to dance for 11 hours a day. I would work 24 hours a day on it if that meant never stepping inside a restaurant again. It's no wonder artists do this when they have the chance. That dancer's perform through injury.
However, I realize that there is no way for artists to work on their art for 11 hours a day when that work does not result in a way to pay for life. A wave of dismissive negativity, or positivity hit me with the thought “oh well, one day I’ll just open up a bakery and hopefully that’ll be good.” My mind continued this tangent into developing a bakery that supported artists. This is how it went in my head:
"Maybe I could supply free food for artists! Hmm, that seems kind of expensive..maybe coffee? I wonder how much that would cut into a bakery's profits... Oh well, there’s always water.”
Followed by me laughing out loud in my apartment alone. And so there it was: free water for artists. The more I thought about this statement the more I started to develop meanings to what this statement means to me.
Although the statement is essentially a joke, the marginalization in the statement suggesting that water is free solely for artists speaks to clean water issues all over the world. There is a huge range of content in this idea alone. Water is not free everywhere. Water is contaminated and sparse in areas all over the world. And what about the rising trend of expensive water?
Reverting back to the notion that everyone has water and advertising that it is free for artists parodies the concept of creating a life through their art form. The statement delivers a message that says, “I'm going to help you. Everyone else already has this, but I am going to give it to you for free!” And the “this” that everyone else already has is a living.