FROM 2015:
The phrase "free water for artists" came out of my mouth as I was talking to myself and making scone dogs.
At the time I was thinking of the 70-hour workweek I had ahead of me and how little I was looking forward to it. At the time I was attempting to spin the workweek 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 to work on my art form, dance, for 11 hours a day as 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 skyrocket. 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 dancers 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.
now:
many sentiments from above still ring true to me, with similar thoughts or barriers in art making. always moving forward, this brings me to
FREE WATER
i’m interested in having a vessel (<use this word every chance i get) to hold the creative work i do and a space that is dedicated to those ideas and explorations. before, i really didn’t enjoy what i was doing on this blog. i still value the content i had been writing about, but i did not feel that i needed to write it. turned off by two things. first, the mass numbers of ‘content creators’ around wtf you should do in every element of your life, i decided that i did not want to add one more voice yelling at the internet. second, i reject the very scripted ideas of what it means to be ‘professional’ online. yeah mkay, so i call this a ‘company’, it’s just me here. there’s no corporate sponsors (yet? i will happily take your money if you dig this), no HR. shit, there’s rarely dance actually being created. regardless, i’m not interested in putting up a front as if this is something more than it is. this is me making things. i want to make them with you. i want to share them with you.
why FREE WATER? cause i like it. and also this much better explanation from my ma:
^^^ that’s what i meant to say.