Category Archives: life

Would you buy Virginia Woolfe’s beach?

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A Cornish beach thought to have inspired Virginia Woolf’s novel To The Lighthouse has been sold for £80,000, says the BBC. It is believed childhood recollections of trips to the seaside in Cornwall influenced her novel, set in the Hebrides.

It’s not quite the oddity one might think, as the proceeds have gone to charity for a local theater. Personally, I find it a very exciting development. I have been staring at the same bit of wall this past year writing my novel, and I’m sure its been a very important influence. I would be willing to part with this portion of the wall for a fraction of the sum Woolfe’s beach got. Similarly, there are these two orange pillows I’ve been resting my feet on. I feel the color orange now pervades my work. You could be the proud owner of Linnea West memorabilia before the rest of the world even knows that name. Think about it.

Street View: L.E.S. and Williamsburg

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Walking around the East Village yesterday this large mural caught my eye at 6th and A. I’ve never noticed it before. It reads “Restrticted Area: For Humans Only.” It evens gives you a phone number to call to report non-humans, but I didn’t try it.

I did a lot of walking yesterday–from the East Village, to the High Line festival on the West side (where there was an hour line to go up), to the East River Park in Williamsburg for a free concert, to dinner by McCarren Pool park. What a great New York summer Sunday!

“Bang,” below, was in Williamsburg and turned out to be an advertisement for a drum school.

How Artists are Poor

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Visual artists, poets– NPR thinks you do it for the love, because as its new series on how artists make a living reveals, you’re not doing it for the money. Revelation, huh?
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What the articles explore is the myriad ways artists support themselves while pursuing their craft. While it is mildly interesting to hear about how different people make money (teaching is a big one), nowhere does it question how difficult it is to make a living in the arts. I believe artists create something of great value for the world, and yet that value is less than often paid back to the artist in dollars that amount to a good living. Partly it’s difficult to assign a dollar value to a work of art.
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But we also have a value system in which the arts seem expendable, like dessert. It’s pleasant, but it’s not meat and potatoes. And the stereotypical ‘starving artist’ doesn’t even get potatoes. While its true you can’t eat a painting or a novel, I rather think- to continue an overextended metaphor- we eat too much, and look and read too little. This leaves artists in rather a tough situation, like this one…

On the other hand, you can’t eat a painting. What do you think?

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