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Notes -
I intellectually agree with you on the broad strokes and the impossibility of restructuring society around the whims of "creatives" - yet emotionally sympathise with @Corvos, since I find myself in a similar boat and used to create a lot of music in university (as well as when I was laid out flat by chronic illness). Given the musical taste you've demonstrated here I doubt you would like any of what I made, but I honed my skill at it until I would say I was at a professional level, or at least close to it. I have some receipts to prove it, too; I minimally marketed my music and ended up selling over $1,000 worth of it with pretty much close to zero financial investment on my part (this is not much in context, but considering how little I was trying to get eyes on it, I'm surprised it actually gained so much traction). At one point I had a friend show a track of mine to someone who had studied audio engineering in university, and they asked to speak to me so they could understand how I was making what I was making. Not to toot my own horn too much, but I was good at it.
At this point, though, I've been so radically run down by the endless demands of my work, which I have complained about here and here, and I barely find myself making anything at all. I used to be so much more of an interesting person; I used to make more, I used to read more, I used to care more about things, and now I find myself largely blanking out in front of the screen during much of my free time because my work and personal commitments swallows all of my energy. I would be lying if I said it didn't bother me.
To be fair, I constantly see artists who are just bad and whose creative endeavours amount to just dabbling make this claim as well (way too many people in the electronic music sphere are capable of only making drone music), and a lot of times it does in fact boil down to a skill issue and placing a lot of blame on "capitalism" to mask their own lack of motivation and talent. But not every eight-hour shift was made equal, and the amount of time I spend at work almost certainly heavily exceeds eight hours per day when you count the unpaid overtime, I'm not really capable of sparing the time to have lunch many (most?) days. The fact that people use the justification to bolster their own failure to accomplish things is not incompatible with the existence of people who are actually burned out as hell on their jobs, barely keeping their head above water on that front, and who would genuinely make things that are worthwhile if their motivation wasn't constantly being sledgehammered.
I would genuinely love to hear some of the music you've created, if you'd be interested in sharing via DM.
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