Dear Reader,
Welcome to Art and Survival, a newsletter where I’ll open up the doors to my feeling body and my tender heart, and share what life is like as I attempt to add beauty and thoughtfulness to the world while feeding myself and taking care of my village. I don’t know that there’s a surefire way to reconcile art and survival, but I’m trying to, and I hope that by documenting the trying, I’ll find like-minded people who are also looking for another way – a third path – through modernity.
A little about me: I am one of those afflicted souls who fortunately/unfortunately fell in love with theatre when I was a child, and who now engages in theatre’s serious play professionally as a writer, performer, and dramaturg. I survived queer youth in South Florida, and then, after freaking out about whether to pursue a STEM degree or an arts degree, went to Boston University to pursue a BFA in Theatre Arts™. After college, I moved to NYC with my then-and-now roommate because we both wanted to Pursue Our Dreams™. Now I’m here, and like everyone else who’s prone to fagg*try and theatricality, I live in Bushwick (in Brooklyn). I pay my bills through work as a company manager for an off-Broadway theater, and create my work in the spacious interstices that reveal themselves throughout the day (commutes, evenings, mornings).
In this newsletter, you can expect to find snippets of my work – journal entries, essays, dialogues, poems – and reflections on the work of others I find inspiring and uplifting. By sharing what I’ve learned about closing the gap between artistic practice and survival in 2020s America, I hope that you are inspired and uplifted, and encouraged to keep going. I am here to document my journey, and to share my work. Whatever brought you here, I hope that you enjoy what you read.
I would like to engage with you, so if anything here makes you think, or notice, or question, please speak up. Share resources, anything – anything that can help us be the poets we are in this frail little world.
With love,
Michael
Most artists who leave the field don’t leave by choice. They leave because they can’t work out the time and money equations.
Artists (and activists) are brilliant at leading amazing lives without a lot of money. That is a gift. Ask most people, “How much money do you need?” They will say: about 50% more, and when you ask them again, the answer will be the same: more. Most people need an uattainable amount of money called More.
Artists have a number that is enough, an amount of money that allows us to live well and not worry about money.
–Andrew Simonet, of Artists U, in Making Your Life as an Artist
