baring the names - a collective emotions

I remember when I first enter AnD, I read Norm Yip's earily blog entry, talking about "what is about bloging....", " how much things are private, what is for public....", "the business world want him to..." then I read Kenjin's describe himself as "struggling artist", shocked me a bit.Then I remember I was talking to one of my good singer friend in Hong Kong, telling him one of my ideas in his MV (for a new album with a concept of "traveling"), is to make him sing with his guitar on the street in an European city. He got a bit offended and told me he don't want to be a "staving artist" on the street.Then I was in a meeting in a record company in Beijing, the boss want to make a MV of one of their singer, started with him as a street singer in Beijing, sharing one lunch box with his girl friend.A friend of mine is making a documentary of a well know artist in Switzerland, the only things the artist refused to be included in this documentary is his old painting studio, basement, dark, and messy, he don't want to show how he "struggled" and how he was "staving", cos his buyers are mostly bankers. "They only want to see beautiful things" he said.Promoting your life (life style as well) seems to be the progress with a lot of "artists". Artist spend a lot of times, money and effort on what they believe, some got lucky, some never.... but I am seeing, once the life got promoted, life style changed, social world shifted, passions also diminished... and slowly bring the crisis in the art.I was a bit confused about all this fact about business, artist, struggling and staving... 99% of "business" is talking about profit, when talk about innovations, it's always "high risk", "business" want it safe, and CONSTANTLY generating profit. So when Britney Spear works, it comes Jessica Simposon, Mandy Moore. When Alanis Morissette works, it comes Meredith Brook, now we have Amy Winehouse, Duffy... for movies, there's Dream Girls, High School Musical, Mama Mia, this is all "strategies" to fill up the market space, nothing creative to me...so I am stuck here.... but always remembering the initiations of my art, and how difficult it was to achieve the status, how was the progress, and try to make a smoother path for the people behind me...Looking up in the internet, it's not difficult to find how people see all this terms:Wikipedia: "A starving artist is anartistwho sacrifices material well-being in order to focus on their artwork. They typically live on minimum expenses, either for a lack of business or because all theirdisposable incomegoes towards art projects. Some starving artists desire mainstream success but have difficulty due to the high barriers in art such asvisual arts, thefilm industry, andtheatre. These artists frequently take temporary positions (such aswaiteringor otherservice industryjobs) while they focus their attention on breaking through in their preferred field. Others may find enough satisfaction in living as artists to choose voluntary poverty regardless of prospects of future financial reward or broad recognition."Mike Garibarbi-Frick (in www.huffingtonpost.com)****Struggling Artist Syndrome:** the pattern of symptoms that characterize or indicate the particular social condition of spending all your time and money on an artistic ideal in the hopes of someday "making it."**Dave Carpenter(full article here)>“Van Gogh was simply broke – he didn’t have $100,000 in debt,” says the 32-year-old Falkowski, who makes text paintings but works weekdays as a medical receptionist to make ends meet. “We all should be so lucky.” Madonna's new single is not a big surprise, but the first line of the lyrics reminded me a lot of her songs have the similar concept:>"What are you waiting for, nobody gonna show you how..." When you can make it, no body gonna ask you how, cos we all know it's not easy, and each person have it's own way to achieving it.~ ~ ~ ~ ~ that's all for this moment ~ ~ ~ ~ ~Virginia Nicholson writes in "Among the Boheminans: Experiments in Living 1900 - 1939": >"Fifty years on we may judge that Dylan Thomas's poverty was noble, while Nina Hamnet's was senseless. But a minor artist with no money goes as hungry as a genius. What drove them to do it? / I believe that such people were not only choosing art, they were choosing the life of the artist. Art offered them a different way of living, one that they believed more than compensated for the loss of comfort and respectability."