I think of this fairly often. There are so many artists whose work has given me so much pleasure and enjoyment over the years, I feel as if they deserve more than I’ve paid for their work. Particularly writers, but also musicians and some actors and directors. But, I haven’t done it.
Some people I think this about (and some of them are dead, and very few of them are short of money AFAIK): George Carlin, CJ Cherryh, Arthur Clarke, Stanley Kubrick, Clint Eastwood, Johnny Carson, The Beatles, Roy Orbison, Carole King, Frederick Pohl, John Sanford, Bernard Cornwell, William Gibson, and I’m just starting to think it about Sarah Vowell. The list could get quite a but longer, but these are off the top of my head.
It does seem unfair that there are so many writers, composers, etc. who have provided me so much enjoyment and never gotten anything from me in return (because of their being dead).
I agree that very few of them are short of mazoolah. I have, however, enjoyed the work of dozens of jazz musicians, and Mozart, who died poor, and wish I could have sent them some money.
Some of the people on your list, though…John Lennon…Carole King…Stan Kubrick…Sarah Vowell…I could add Laura Nyro, Spain Rodriguez, George Sanders, Kate Beaton…
I want to send Bob Log III, money, all of my wife’s underwear, scotch, and an unlimited supply of boobs to dip in them. It’s the Law, You Gotta Love It
There is an artist [of any sort] sponsoring site called Patreon which allows you to contribute set amounts to artists to allow them to produce whatev er it is they do.
I give $5 per month through Patreon to an artist whose work I like, and a range of similar contributions add up to a few hundred bucks from a fairly diverse group of people. Not enough for him to give up his day job, but enough to keep buying pens and paint. Others get money per image / comic book. Well-established artists like Amanda Palmer increasingly use this form of crowd sourcing.
I occasionally feel guilty that my bootleg self-recorded cassette of Monty Python has lasted as long as it has, and that I have somehow robbed them of income.
Back in the day, when Napster was running wild and I didn’t yet realize why I was doing wrong, I was contacted by Roy Orbison’s surviving sister(?). I had downloaded a bunch of Orbison’s music.
The threatening email made me look into the situation. I sent a heartfelt apology with an attached receipt for all the Orbison music I had just purchased. She accepted my apology.
Now I’m thinking of doing this for the first time, for real. Sarah Vowell is speaking at some school in Indiana in February. The lecture’s free and I think I’ll buzz down and catch it, and put a $20 bill in her hand personally. If she asks why, I’ll tell her that it’s less presumptuous than offering to take her out to dinner.
Lots of famous artists have as much money (and sex) as they could ever want. What artists really need is good mental health, and I can’t give them that. Sometimes I wish I could’ve told Cobain when he was alive how much we appreciated his music and most people had no problems with him retiring, we just wanted him to be happy. I thought his suicide was in part due to tensions with the music establishment and burnout.
My general feeling is that’s what they get paid for.
But in 2006, I posted this about actress Danielle DuClos:
For whatever reason, DuClos (as I later discover her name was) did not set Hollywood on fire. I always thought, though, that she so perfectly captured that tiny moment on film and I always wanted to hand her a check for thousands of dollars and say, “You earned this for that.”
Ya know, I have to heartily disagree with this. Lots of famous artists are relatively well adjusted, and lots of “normal” folks live comfortably and crazy until they meet bad ends. It’s more likely that you’ll toil in obscurity for your art than you will kill yourself directly or indirectly because you can’t deal with the pressures and adulation that success can bring.
And as much as I’d like to bitch about the industry or Courtney Love, Kurt killed himself almost undoubtedly because he couldn’t deal with being Kurt. If he didn’t figure out how to deal with that, he was probably headed for an early grave, famous or not.
