In a recent post, I mentioned that I was working on a new novel. This is true, but what I didn’t mention is that I’m also working on a new piece of nonfiction. This work focuses primarily on the cost and value of creation, and the damages that are happening to the creative class due to some aspects of modern culture. In fact, a working subtitle for the book (at least as I’m writing it) is The Genocide of the Creative Class.
Here’s a snippet of the current work-in-progress.
For a lot of people, creation is their livelihood. For others, it’s where their livelihood should be. I may be modest at times, but I know I’m no Picasso. For people like him, there obviously was a motivation to create – but there was also a cost. In his lifetime, Picasso created an estimated 50,000 individual works. If nothing else, that’s a lot of paint, paper and time.
Still, the obvious question here is “What if Picasso had not been able to create as his profession?” Of course there is no way he’d have created 50,000 works – there simply isn’t enough time in one’s life to do something like that as a hobby. Or, if somehow he could have still produced as many works, it is highly unlikely he would have had the drive to do so, much less perfect his craft to the level which he did.
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