Promotion and other things I'm too good for

Hey Artist,

I am normally fairly good at avoiding the trap of thinking about how things "should" be. A pragmatist by nature (or so I thought), I don't usually waste time on thinking about the unfair. So when a fact rubs me wrong it rubs me wrong hard.

I have always loved the Steve Martin quote:" Be so good they can't ignore you".

Unfortunately, like many quotes, it sounds great but it is less than truthful.

Maybe in the 70's it was true. Then again in the 70's you could buy a house after getting your first job out of high school, and savings accounts paid interest.

The truth is that like so many other things art has become a commodity. As an actor, my soul wants to believe that my continuing education should focus on learning new accents, new techniques, or maybe a foreign language. But while these skills will indeed help me grow as an artist, a far better career move is to study marketing.

We live in a world focused on novelty. If I approached Fleetwood Mac or Ocean Spray a year ago and told them that I was going to explode their sales by having a

skateboarder post a short video online I doubt that they would have paid me for my proposal. But Dreams is at the top of the chart and Ocean spray sold so much juice that they bought that guy a truck.

So what I'm saying is that the old rules (if they ever worked) no longer apply. An artist needs to spend 1/3 of their time making art and the rest promoting it. How I feel about it does not matter.

I know it's odd for someone going by The Mercenary Artist to feel at odds with this. But I do.

Nevertheless, I think that art needs to be seen. So if they only way to do that is to spend more time promoting it than creating it, that's what I'm willing to do. I want my art to be seen. Even if it means that there is less time to make more of it.

"Be so omnipresent they can't ignore you".

-E