is waif
I CAN’T WAIT TO SELL OUT
I can’t wait to sell out.
I can’t wait for the day that I wake up to an offer from someone, or something, willing to
buy me out; as if I were a commodity; an investment. [What that says about me is this; there are shortcuts to monetary security, and for those of us who grew up being taught that that was the end all and be all of our existence; to go to school, get good grades, get a degree, leverage degree into high paying job; work; and enjoy financial ‘success’; we are likely to be looking for outs through which to get to that end result.] When this day inevitably comes, for me that is; when someone is willing to buy me out, I will oblige them, at whatever obnoxiously high sum they have deemed my existence, or something I have brought into existence’s worth. When this inevitably happens, the people lining up to tell me that I have sold out won’t be around me, or facing me day to day, but rather some distance away, hands cupped around their mouths, shouting at me that I have lost my authenticity; sacrificed my integrityーthat which I owe to them, and they would be wrong in doing so.
“On the day that my bank account reads a number with twin commas holding it in place, should you expect me to feel shame? Remorse?”
What integrity must I maintain in pursuit of the bag? In pursuit of dough; of bread[; racks; stacks; cheese?] What within myself is expected to remain the same? In the colloquial definition of selling out there is an understated disdain for those who do, but why is this the case? On the day that my bank account reads a number with twin commas holding it in place, should you expect me to feel shame? Remorse? For whatever reason, one beyond me at the current stage in my life, our capitalist overlords seem to be the generals of the war on artistic integrity. When they throw their sticky dollars at anything of an abstract; or non-monetary value, that thing becomes compromised, and its quality; its sanctity evaporatesーit dissolves; it is diluted into something that exists as a perversion of its origin; it exists only for the purpose of further dilution.
It makes you wonder which to pursue, as a natural creative, exclusively monetary
pursuits, artistic pursuit with a reluctant acknowledgement of the bearance of monetary forces on your life; or the pursuit of raw artistic expression. Of course my characterization of this phenomena is one that seeks only to acknowledge it existence, and to suggest that its existence resembles a spectrum; [with the points of polarity being where people’s motivations and efforts go collectively].
To distill this somewhat, it is important to account for art, or really anything created without the attachment of money initially, that finds itself tarnished by the money made available to it; it means the actual work and the people behind it. Here we can see the reasoning for what some older works of art are valued at compared to that of modern art. The pricelessness of the artistic effigies of the past represent something interesting when contextualized with contemporary art; quality unafflicted by the current aggregate state of economic, social, and technological fluidity that we find ourselves in; and therein how art has arguably suffered from it.
Art is as abstract and broad a concept as its definition is limited in defining it. With this
knowledge we could look to platforms like Youtube, and the state that they exist in from their origin compared to now. Whether or not Youtube is a work of art begs an entirely different question, but for most intents and purposes; there is art on the platform, and there is a lot of it. Youtube’s original slogan, in its earlier days was “Broadcast Yourself.”, and with this in mind we can contextualize the shift from that; a sort of open arms acceptance of any and all types of content, to one now that creators constantly complain is centered around keeping advertisers happyーthis is the core principle of selling out, and we can see that it is not exclusive to individuals, but truly any entity that invites nuance and niche, and rejects those things in lieu of monetary gain.
In essence, to be waif is to be fluid; it is to be untethered, and this fluidity when infused with the corrosive ease that money can bring, when achieved with a cynically earnest understanding that the ‘selling out’ is occurring for the furthering of the artist and/or the art; that, is waif [not because of the rejection of the disdain which this auction of talent tends to bring, but for the progressive redefinition of what it means to be true to oneself].